


The Sins of the Father

by ayy_zajjy



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/M, Loss of Parent(s), Minor Original Character(s), Past Relationship(s), Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 19:18:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 34
Words: 125,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5796685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayy_zajjy/pseuds/ayy_zajjy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the assassination of her father brings Elektra Natchios back to New York, Matt Murdock must face more than one ghost from his past. Crossing paths with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, Elektra will stop at nothing to exact her revenge, and Matt will stop at nothing to protect her - from the killer, the cops, and herself. Season 2 AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is sort of my stab at "Season 2" of the Netflix series. Much like the way Netflix handled many of the characters in Season 1, I tried to put a unique spin on the new major characters (Elektra and Bullseye) while staying true to the spirit of their comic book counterparts. I began working on this before they announced the inclusion of Frank Castle in Season 2, so the Punisher is not present (sorry!).
> 
> Special thanks to [calilumina](http://archiveofourown.org/users/calilumina/pseuds/calilumina) for acting as both my beta reader and sounding-board!
> 
> Updates will be posted on Sundays and Thursdays.

Elektra Natchios turned her Porsche 911 into the drive of what used to be her family’s Long Island estate. It was a chilly late-September night, and she drove with the top down. The cold air bit into her skin and whipped her dark curls about her face, reminding her that she was still alive, that the world was still turning in spite of everything. And besides, no one bought a convertible to drive it with the top  _ up _ .

The blue-white beams of the headlights illuminated the gutted corpse of the house, charred walls and jagged beams casting huge shadows, making the whole ragged mess look even more ghastly than it did during the day.

There was a man standing in front of the house. 

Elektra's grip tightened on the steering wheel, and for a second she considered ramming the trespasser with her car, but the Porsche didn't deserve the abuse. She reached into the pocket of her jacket and gripped the handle of her little subcompact pistol, placing her thumb on the safety. He wasn’t a cop. He was too well-tailored to be a squatter. He was wearing sunglasses at eleven-thirty at night and holding a long white cane…

She let go of the gun and turned off the car and got out, leaving the headlights on. 

“I should call the cops on you for trespassing,” she said.

The corner of the man’s mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “Technically, this is a crime scene. You’re not supposed to be here either, without a police escort.”

“‘Police escort.’” Elektra scoffed. She tore off the yellow police tape criss-crossing the house like a grotesque Christmas present. “Oops.”

He laughed. His laugh reminded her of fireworks in the summer, reminded her of the smell of leaves in the fall and how it felt to not be alone. His laugh annoyed her. And it annoyed her that he looked every bit as handsome as she remembered, that her ex didn’t get fat and sloppy after college like everyone else’s. 

“Why are you here, Matt?” As she walked up to the porch, dead, blackened grass clutched at her ankles.

“I thought I’d pay my respects.” They had good memories here. She used to drive him out here when it was too hot to go out in the city, and they’d swim in the pool and he’d make them lunch, and they’d have sex in the shower when her father wasn’t home.

“What are you going to do with it?” Matt asked, gesturing with his cane toward the wreck of a house.

“I don’t know.” The property, or what was left of it, was hers now.  _ What an inheritance _ , she thought. A pile of burned splinters. “You could’ve come to the funeral.”

Matt turned towards her. She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that, even if he wasn’t really looking at her at all. “I thought that might be...awkward.”

“I heard you got your own practice,” she said, changing the subject. “How’s that going?”

“With Foggy, yeah. ‘Nelson and Murdock.’”  _ Foggy Nelson _ . Elektra recalled Matt’s slightly goofy best friend/roommate/shadow back in college.

“We’re still working on making our first million.” He grinned, showing a mouth full of white teeth.  _ That fucking smile _ . She always thought he had a nice smile. She wished he would have left that at home.

Elektra turned away from him. She was happy that things had turned out well for him, but she didn’t need to deal with their memories right now. There were enough memories of happier times haunting her already.

The front double doors of the house still stood in their frame, blackened but intact, save for the little glass windows that had been blown out. The rest of the windows were gone too, and there was a gaping hole in the front wall.

She could have gone in that way, but turned the handle on one of the front doors instead. This was her father's house, the house she played in as a little girl and snuck out of as a bigger girl. She wasn't going to enter through a hole in the wall like a cockroach.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Matt grabbed the back of her jacket, but Elektra shrugged him off. Two steps in and she skidded across the ash, a slip that would have left a less agile woman on her ass.

"You should have worn sensible shoes," Matt said, chuckling. That laugh. It was really getting on her nerves.

Elektra looked down at her wedge heeled boots. "These  _ are _ my sensible shoes."

It was hard to believe anyone had lived in this place in the last one hundred years, let alone a month ago. That  _ she  _ had grown up here. Ash had settled on everything like a thick layer of dust, half-revealing and half-concealing the twisted shapes of melted furniture and broken things. The house was a grotesque shadow of its former self, hauntingly familiar and utterly alien at the same time.

It made her think of her father's corpse wrapped in a plastic garment bag on a stainless steel slab. They made her identify the body.  _ How am I supposed to do this _ ? How could that be the same man who tucked her in at night and called her his princess? It had his nose, his chin, but that thing in the morgue was cold and gray and the back of its skull looked like it had been blown out with a hammer.

_ At least he didn’t suffer _ . That’s what one of the detectives, the one who could actually pronounce her name, had said to her. How in the fuck did that make this any better? Her father was dead, gone, but it was quick and painless and so it was fine? They were unable to conceal the wound completely, so she had spent the entire funeral looking at the nickel-sized hole between his eyes, not even able to pretend for just a moment that he was just sleeping.

Elektra made her way to the remains of her father's office - fortunately on the ground floor - more by touch and memory than visual cues. The light from her car only came in through the holes and missing windows, projecting eerie blue-white phantoms along the walls and corridors.

“We _really_ shouldn’t be in here," Matt said. That idiot had actually followed her inside.

"Then go back outside.”

"What are you looking for?" He was still following behind her, managing incredibly well amidst all the clutter. Somehow, that didn’t surprise her. Elektra ignored him and kept walking.

The walls of her father’s office blocked almost any light from the outside from entering the room, so she had to fish her phone out of her coat pocket, silently praying the dry cleaner could get the ash stains out of the satin lining. When she turned the screen on she half-expected some kind of ghostly apparition to be hulking in the corner, but it was only more of the same: broken furniture and charred walls. Her father's desk looked as if somebody had hit it with a sledgehammer.  _ They were looking for something _ , she thought.  _ But did they find it _ ?

Elektra turned around and found Matt standing in the doorway.

"This is the room. Just stay there."

She walked to the northeast corner, furthest from the doorway, and shone her light on the ground, counting as she walked over the large marble tiles. Three spaces, then two. Knight to C-2. Kneeling on the ground, already resigning herself to the fact that her jeans were ruined, she pulled a large flathead screw driver out of her pants pocket and began to pry around the edges of the tile. She managed to lift it an inch maybe, before it fell back down with a heavy thud.

"What are you doing?" Matt asked.

"Come here."

"You just told me to stay where I was."

" _ Come here _ ." Elektra got up and dragged him over to the loose tile, placing his hand on it.

"My father's safe is under here. You pry this tile up enough for me to get my hands underneath and then we can move it." She handed him the screwdriver and Matt ran his fingers along its edge. 

"Don't you have a crowbar?"

Elektra frowned. "Why the hell would I have a crowbar? I don't even know why I have  _ that _ ."

Matt felt along the perimeter of the tile with one hand, tool in the other, until his fingers located a spot that must have been looser than the rest, although Elektra couldn't tell any difference. He wedged the screwdriver in between the tiles and with a bit of a grunt pried that side up. Elektra shoved her hands underneath.

"I got it." With Matt's help, she pushed it over, facedown against the adjacent tile, sending up a cloud of ash all around them. When it cleared, she saw the safe. 

The only thing clandestine about the safe was its location. The combination was painfully simple: her birthday. When the last number was set on the dial and the lock clicked open, Elektra held her breath. Surely if the person - or people - who had murdered her father opened it, they wouldn't have bothered to close it up and put the tile back into place.

The items on top were ordinary documents - birth certificates, deeds, her father's proof of citizenship - that she hastily shoved under her arm. The tile and the thick lead walls of the safe had protected the papers from the flames. It wasn't until she saw the fat leather folio that she could breathe again. 

"Yes! It's here!" She turned it over in her hands with reverence, like she had just discovered the enigma machine.

"What is it?"

_ Shit _ . She shouldn’t have said anything. "Company records. Shipping contracts, manifests - that sort of thing.” She knew Matt didn’t believe her.

Someone had torn up her father’s Manhattan apartment and then done the same out here on Long Island, eventually burning the place down. They were looking for something...and Elektra was pretty sure she had just found it. She was certain the name of the person who had wanted her father dead was lurking somewhere in these files.

_ Promise me _ , her father had said to her half a year ago.  _ Promise me you’ll destroy everything in the safe if anything happens to me _ . At the time she had laughed and told him he wasn’t that old, but she did make the promise. Now she thought he must have known, somehow, that this was coming. Elektra would keep her promise - but she had to go through the papers first.

"You need to give that to the police," Matt said.

“It’s just business stuff,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. He could always tell when she was lying. But her father wanted this to stay secret for some reason, and she wasn’t about to betray him to her goody-two-shoes of an ex-boyfriend.

“You don’t go sneaking around a crime scene at midnight for ‘just business stuff.’”

"Then get a warrant," she snapped.

"Subpoena." It was too dark to see him clearly, but she knew Matt was smirking at her.

"Whatever."

Elektra got up, trying to dust the ash off her knees but only succeeded in rubbing it in all over her legs. She led Matt back out of the house after she briefly considered leaving him there. He’d just find his way out anyway. As soon as she got a look at him in the full light of the car she burst out laughing.

"Oh my God. You look like one of those people from a video where they expose the terrible working conditions of coal miners." Elektra ran over to the driver's side mirror and saw her own blackened face. "Oh my God. So do I." The doorman of her apartment building knew better than to ask any questions.

The bright lights of the city twinkled across the water, beckoning her back to Manhattan, but Long Island was dark and dead quiet, aside from Matt Murdock’s god damned laugh.

“Get in,” she said. “I’ll take you back.”

Matt held up his phone. "I can call a cab."

"That'll take forever. And you look a mess. I'll drive you."

"No, it's-"

Elektra ignored him. "Get in." She grabbed Matt's arm and ushered him to the passenger side before hopping in the driver's seat.

"You got a new car," he said as he put on his seatbelt. Elektra carefully stowed the items she had found inside a compartment between the two front seats.

“The last one was, like, five years old.”

" _ So old _ ,” Matt said sarcastically. Elektra rolled her eyes. “Let me guess - red?"

"Of course."

“Kind of late in the year for a convertible.”

"What? It's not raining." Fortunately the battery still had enough juice left in it to turn over the engine. It purred under her feet.

Elektra peeled out of the drive and onto the road, pushing past sixty before the house was out of sight. This time of night on Long Island you could drive the highway like a maniac (or in Elektra's mind, drive your Porsche like it was meant to be driven).

She didn’t bother with the radio - the hum of six cylinders was as sweet as any music - and shifted into a higher gear as she picked up speed. “How’s that feel between your legs, Murdock?”

Matt nodded appreciatively. "It’s a nice car." He always liked it when she drove fast. Elektra shook the memory from her head. She should  _ not _ be flirting with him.

“What do you know about what happened to my father?” she asked.

Matt shrugged. “Just what’s been in the papers.”

“Oh. I just thought maybe you’d heard something because of your job.”

“Cops usually don’t talk to defense attorneys until they’re forced to. They should be keeping you informed, though.”

“They claim they are. So, they’re either useless or they’re lying.”

“Well…” Matt trailed off.

“What?” Matt shook his head. “What, Matt?”

“The force has been kind of a mess since the whole Fisk thing.”

“Oh, yeah,” Elektra said. “I heard about that. They even arrested a congressman, right?”

“Yeah. Which isn’t to say catching your father’s killer shouldn’t be a priority. It’s just that finding out half the force is crooked hasn’t exactly bolstered the NYPD’s recruiting efforts. But I’m sure they’re doing their best.”

Elektra frowned. He didn’t sound sure at all. She could have really used a cigarette, but they were in her bag under the seat, and she didn't exactly want Matt to know she'd taken up smoking.

“I know a cop who owes me a favor," he said. "I can ask him what’s going on.”

Elektra narrowed her eyes. “Don’t do this, Matt.”

“Do what?”

“Be a boy scout.” This was so typical of him. Inserting himself into everyone’s problems. Playing the good guy. She couldn’t stand it.

Matt looked offended. “Calling in a favor from the cops is hardly being a boy scout.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“You just asked me.”

“I asked what you  _ heard _ . I didn’t ask you to do anything.”

Matt frowned, crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine.” He sighed. “Good to know some things haven’t changed.”

Elektra gave him a dirty look. She knew he couldn’t  _ really  _ see her face, but sometimes she thought he just  _ knew _ . Like he could smell it or something.

“No. They haven’t.” He was still as self-righteous as ever.

They sat in a tense silence until she came up on the East River and the end of her amateur Grand Prix run. “Do you still live in Hell’s Kitchen?” she asked.

Matt nodded and gave her his address. She had a feeling that even if he were making millions, he would still live there.

It was after midnight and Manhattan traffic was moving at something above a snail’s pace, but the traffic lights were still long and painful to the driver of a car built for speed. Elektra swore when they came up on red again, turning what should have been a two minute drive down a handful of blocks into a twenty minute one. 

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that this happened to you,” Matt said quietly. He turned his head to where he was facing her, looking her in the eye or as close to it as he could get.

Grief welled up in her in an instant, like a bubbling spring. It always came upon her all of a sudden and without warning.  _ Shit _ , she thought.  _ You fucking boy scout _ . She clapped a hand over her mouth and tried to will the tears back up into her eyeballs. She didn’t want to cry in front of him.

Looking up, Elektra shook her head, blinked hard to clear her vision. “Oh,” she said. “It’s green.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Elektra got back to Chelsea, she parked her car in the garage beneath her building and took the elevator up to her condo on the tenth floor. Her father had bought the place for her as a graduation present. The rest of her friends got some cash, a car maybe, and she got a one and a half million dollar apartment. She was well aware of just how spoiled she was.

She jumped in the shower, watching the water turn black as she washed the ash from her skin and circle the drain in a swirling, dark maelstrom. She tried not to think about Matt. She tried not to think about what happened to her father. She ended up reading the label on the shampoo bottle just to give her brain something to do.

Before she went to bed, she hid the leather folio in the closet behind a couple of shopping bags. Just in case someone came over. Elektra fell asleep on one corner of her king-sized bed and dreamed about the Fourth of July and the men she loved.

It was a quarter past eleven when she got out of bed. She didn’t bother to put on pants as she went about her morning routine. There were two suitcases half unpacked in her bedroom and another in the living room. She had been in Tokyo for four months when she got the call about her father. Returning to New York, to this place, was supposed to feel like a homecoming. But without her father, the city of her youth felt even more alien than the constant lights and shoebox rooms of Japan.

Elektra fired up the espresso machine and looked for something to eat in the fridge. The shelves were bare, save for a half empty case of beer, a bottle of mustard, and some Chinese takeout that was growing mold.

“Dammit.” Coffee for breakfast again.

She opened a window and lit up a cigarette and got the folio out of her closet. She pushed aside two vases of dying flowers to make room on the table for the ledgers. Well-wishers had sent over a dozen different arrangements that were all dead now, wilted and molting. She was going to have to tell the cleaners to get rid of them before she got ants.

The papers were all in her father’s handwriting, written in Greek. Although his long years in the States had made him fluent in spoken English, he’d never quite gotten the hang of the Latin alphabet. For Elektra, it was just the opposite. She always spoke Greek with her father at home, but the opportunities for her to read and write it were limited. Going through hundreds of his papers was going to take her a while.

Some of the papers were yellow and moldering, probably as old as she was. All of them were ordinary lined paper, not official looking at all. You could glance at these and think it was a thirty year collection of grocery lists. But she knew what they really were. And so did the people who killed him.

Elektra passed over the papers that looked old and tried to focus on the newer ones. It seemed unlikely that her father had been killed for evading taxes a quarter of a century ago. That was Hugo Natchios’s dirty little secret. _Her_ dirty little secret. His company moved goods between the United States and Asia, mostly Japan, and didn’t pay taxes on half of them. Convincing a duty official to look the other way or to declare only a fraction of the shipment was what she did. _A bribe goes down easier when it comes from a pretty girl_. The implication that she might sleep with them usually helped.

What she had laid out before her now was every record of that - dates, names, cargo. Her father made and kept these records just in case someone had a change of heart. _Where are you_? She ran her hands over the papers as if she could divine their contents. _Which one_?

Of course, she couldn’t. _Stop being lazy_ , she told herself. It wasn’t like she had anywhere to be. She started with the stack of papers that looked the most recent and dug in. The first few sets of documents were familiar, companies that had been in on her father’s scheme for years and with whom he split the profits. There was no reason for any of them to want to mess up a good thing.

A little further down in the pile she came upon something different. There was no company name at all. Just a symbol. Curved, a little like a lower-case _zeta_ , but it wasn’t Greek. It wasn't Japanese either. She didn’t think it was a letter in any alphabet at all. It ended with something that kind of looked like the head a snake. Something about that symbol was familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. The ledger was dated around this time last year, from some place in Southeast Asia to Okinawa to New York. Two tons of cargo for an amount of money that made even her eyes water. That wasn’t the difference between paid and unpaid import taxes. That was a payment. _What the hell_?

Elektra set this page aside and moved onto the others. She took a long pull on her cigarette to still her trembling hands. Her father had always told her he transported legitimate goods, legal goods, that import and export taxes were a scam run by governments and he was going to scam them right back. Tax fraud wasn’t exactly great, she knew, but it was a hell of a lot different than smuggling illegal goods into the country.

Her heart sank when she saw another manifest bearing that same symbol, and another and another. There were nearly a dozen, all from the last two years. All for several tons of unidentified cargo and millions of dollars each. The sum of just these dozen shipments was more than her father’s company’s legally declared net worth.

“Jesus Christ,” she said aloud. _What the hell is this thing_? Drugs? Weapons? _No_ , she thought. There was no way her father would have anything to do with something like that. But what else could it be? No one paid millions of dollars to sneak in a couple tons of fruit.

She couldn’t shake the mounting feeling of nausea, that she had somehow facilitated all of this, or at least inadvertently assured its success. She had met with so many people on her father’s behalf in Japan, and being cryptic about anything even slightly unsavory things was a Japanese specialty. Could she have mistaken one of these people for a legitimate Japanese businessman and ensured his way to the US was clear?

“Oh my God.” She looked around the room, half-expecting her father’s ghost to materialize and explain all this away, to make it make sense somehow. _Daddy, what did you do_? He had to have been forced, somehow. Coerced. There was no other explanation. He had a good and - relatively speaking - low risk thing going with his company. Her father had never been a greedy man. He must have been threatened. Is that why they killed him? Or had it just been to keep him quiet?

Elektra looked around her apartment again, but this time it was at all the windows, the shadows clinging to the corners. Was someone watching her now too, and with a gun in hand? She got up and quickly closed the window and all the blinds and double checked that her front door was locked. _Maybe I’m just being paranoid_ , she thought. _Maybe not_.

At times like this she wished she had a photographic memory. She read and reread each of the papers, repeating the details aloud until she was certain she had memorized them. Burning that symbol into her brain. These records were important to someone. If it came down to it, this might be the only leverage she had. To make a copy or keep them in her apartment was too risky.

There was a bank that she had heard about in Midtown that had been broken into not that long ago, which meant that it now had the latest and most high-tech security system on the market. She would go down there this afternoon and reserve a safety deposit box and give the key to someone she knew she could trust. Someone who had nothing to do with her father or the company. Someone who was smart enough to build a case against these monsters if something happened to her.

 

\----------

 

Karen Page knocked on Matt’s open office door and walked in. She put a fresh cup of coffee down on his desk.

“You look like you need another this morning.”

 _That good, huh_? Matt ran his fingers through his hair.

“I had kind of a long night,” he admitted. Not the usual long night of running around and cracking ribs in the mask. He slept well after those. But Elektra Natchios wouldn’t let him sleep. Memories he thought were buried boiled to the surface, haunting him. Her voice and the smell of her hair in the wind. In some ways, he’d been chasing her ghost for a long time.

Now she was back in the flesh. The rational part of him hoped she’d get on the next flight back to Japan, or anywhere. The rational part of him knew this wasn’t going to end well. Not with her. But there had always been a part of him that was too idealistic for his own good, and though the cynicism of adulthood had made this part grow smaller and quieter, disillusionment could not destroy it outright. That part hoped she never left.

“Don’t forget that you have an appointment at eleven with Mrs., uh-” Karen walked back to her desk and picked something up. “Mrs. Edwards. Did you hear that, Foggy? Appointment at eleven?”

“I haven’t forgotten since you reminded me last time,” Foggy called from his office.

Matt checked the time on his watch. Quarter til. He picked up his coffee and walked out into the reception area.

“You two sound like an old married couple.” He grinned to himself. The stifled silence and heat coming off both of them told him he had hit the right nerve. Matt was just waiting for his _‘kiss her, you fool’_ moment.

He leaned against the doorframe and sipped his drink. Matt hadn’t been lying when he said all he knew about Hugo Natchios’s murder was what had been reported in the press. What he hadn’t mentioned was that he knew _everything_ that had been reported in the press because he was obsessively following the case.

He had learned the murder at the office several weeks ago when Karen was watching the news on her laptop. The reports didn’t have much in the way of details, only that a man had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the head in his Upper East Side residence and his other home on Long Island had been torched. The man’s name was Hugo Natchios.

“Is that-” Foggy had started to ask.

“Yes,” Matt had said. He had been vaguely aware of Foggy explaining Matt’s connection to one of the wealthier men in the city, Karen’s surprise and then sympathy, as Matt stumbled into his office and slumped down at his desk.

Matt hadn’t known Hugo Natchios well, but Elektra’s father had always been nice to him. Even if he couldn’t have been thrilled his only daughter was dating a blind Irish kid from Hell’s Kitchen. Hugo Natchios had a thick Greek accent and didn’t like to speak English if he didn’t have to. Elektra said that sometimes her father would pretend like he couldn’t understand what was being said during business negotiations to get a better deal. He had always seemed to be working and he didn’t spend a lot of money on himself. The houses, the cars, the things were all for his wife and child.

Elektra may have had the typical ‘Daddy, this; Daddy, that’ attitude of all spoiled, rich girls, but she genuinely loved her father. Their relationship had always reminded him of Matt’s relationship with his own dad, two against the world - only with much more money involved.

As soon as Karen had left the office that day, Foggy had begged Matt to leave it alone, not to put on the mask and track down the killer on his own. Foggy was worried Matt wouldn’t be able to stop at just beating on the guy. He was right to be worried. Matt promised to let the criminal justice system do what it was supposed to - a promise that would have been much harder to keep if he’d had even the faintest idea of where to start looking for someone who wanted Natchios dead.

A knock on the office door snapped him back to the present, back to his real job. _Keep it together, Murdock_.

Mrs. Edwards had talon-like acrylic fingernails that she tapped on the table of their conference room. She smelled of at least three different hair products. They introduced themselves and got down to business.

“How can we help you today, Mrs. Edwards?” Foggy asked.

“Not me,” she said. “It’s my boy, Toby. Now, I don’t want you thinking he’s not a good boy, because he is. I raised him right. He’s done nothing wrong, just gone and made friends with the wrong people.”

“Where is your son now?” Matt asked. He had a pretty good idea.

Mrs. Edwards let out a long sigh. “They got him locked up at the station. They said they're going to charge him with _murder_. He’s never even fired a gun. The only thing that boy’s guilty of is a bad choice of friends. Lord knows how many times I told him not to run around with them boys.”

“Is this related to the gang shooting last night?” Matt asked. He’d heard about that this morning on the news. He didn’t have a lot of patience for gangsters. He had even less for murderers.

“He’s not in the gang," Mrs. Edwards implored. "Just runs around with ‘em sometimes, you know? Trying to look hard. He didn’t hurt anybody last night. He didn’t know anybody was gonna get hurt. You know he just turned eighteen last month? Lord Jesus…” The woman trailed off, putting her hand on her head. Karen’s pen scratched across a pad of paper. “He’s supposed to go to junior college next fall. He can’t go to prison. You can help, right? Prove he didn’t kill anyone?”

“We can help,” Foggy said. “So, your son was at that shooting last night. He’s friends with the shooter?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call them _friends_ ,” Mrs. Edwards said with an air of disgust. “But that’s who he was with. He didn’t shoot anybody. He never even touched that gun. You know what? This is all because of that man. That _Fisk_. He said he was going to make Hell’s Kitchen a better place, and all he did was make it worse. Toby looked up to him. All the neighborhood kids did. He made people believe that he cared. But he was just like the rest. They don’t care about people like us.”

“We care,” Foggy said emphatically.

“I know you do, honey. I knew it the moment I walked in.” _What is it with Foggy and middle-aged women_?

“I’m guessing he hasn’t had any priors since his birthday?” Matt asked. “His juvenile record should be sealed.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Edwards said. “He’s never been in trouble with the law. He’s a good boy.”

“The cops are probably just trying to scare him,” Matt said. “If they can’t connect him to the murder weapon and there aren’t any witnesses naming his as the shooter, they don’t have anything.”

“If they want him scared, they just need to let me in that cell with him for five minutes,” Mrs. Edwards said darkly. Karen started to snicker and then stopped herself.

“We should go down to the precinct and see exactly what they have,” Foggy said to Matt. Matt nodded.

“You can wait here if you’d like, Mrs. Edwards,” Karen said. “I can make you a cup of coffee or some tea.”

“Oh, alright. Coffee would be nice, honey.”

Matt and Foggy set off for the 15th Precinct on foot. The weather was still warm enough to go outside without a coat, but that wouldn’t last much longer.

“No timely intervention from the man in the mask last night?” Foggy asked.

Matt had gone a long way in regaining Foggy’s trust, but he wasn’t off the hook. And Foggy wasn’t going to like what Matt had done last night, but he’d like it even less if he found out later. _No secrets_.

“I ran into Elektra last night.”

“Oh, _shit_. How was that? Awkward?”

“You know, it actually could have been worse.”

“Where was this? Have you been going to fancy nightclubs without me?”

“No.” Matt laughed but it tapered off quickly. “I, uh, went out to her place on Long Island.” He felt Foggy’s body tense.

“The one that was burned to a crisp? _Why_? Don’t tell me you went as-”

“No,” Matt cut him off. “I went as me.” He had thought there might still be some cops there. “I just...I wanted to get a feel for what happened there. I can’t exactly tell from a photo.”

“Can’t you?”

Matt sighed. “No. I can’t.” They’d been over this half a dozen times. His fingertips were sensitive enough to detect the tiny marks a printer’s press left behind on physical paper, but when it came to anything displayed on a screen, he really had no clue. The fact that Foggy didn’t entirely believe his explanation was a painful reminder of just how much trust had been lost in their friendship.

“Okay, so again I have to ask: why?” Foggy said.

“I don’t know. I used to go over there sometimes, with her. I guess I just had to confirm it for myself that it was really gone.”

“And you weren’t hoping to run into her at all,” Foggy said sarcastically.

“No, I wasn’t.” _Was I_?

Foggy sighed. “Now you’re just lying to yourself.”

“I’m not - I think she’s in danger, Foggy.”

“Here we go,” Foggy muttered.

“No, I’m serious. She had a gun.”

Foggy stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “She tried to shoot you?” He raised his voice nearly to a shout.

“No.” Matt shushed him and dragged him along down the street. “She just had it under her jacket, I think.” He knew she liked to go to a target range upstate, but she had never carried a gun on her person before.

“Well, her father was just shot, and as far as I know the guy is still on the loose," Foggy said. "I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable for her to carry around protection.”

“I don’t know, Foggy. Something about this doesn’t feel right. She got some stuff out of the house but wouldn’t tell me what it was. I -”

“Matt.” Foggy interrupted him. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” Foggy sounded just like _her_.

“Have you heard of mental gymnastics? Because sometimes I think you might qualify for the Olympics.”

Matt frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re looking for an excuse to put on the mask. To insert yourself into this. ‘Oh, she’s carrying a gun so she must be in danger, and Matt Murdock is the only guy who can save her.’ Has she asked for your help? Have the cops thrown in the towel on the investigation?”

“No…” Matt said slowly. “But I don’t think I’m doing that.”

Foggy shook his head. “It’s a real shame your powers of observation don’t extend to yourself, buddy. But I guess that’s what I’m here for, huh? Reality check. I may not be able to hear someone’s heart beat, but my bullshit detector is still pretty good.”

Matt let out a long sigh. A few blocks north of them a siren went off and a police cruiser bowled down the street.

“I’m just saying that I’m worried about her.”

“Sure,” Foggy said. “That’s fair. So do what everyone else does when they’re worried about someone. Give her a call. Ask her what’s going on. You know, act like a _normal_ person.”

Sitting down for a talk with Elektra Natchios was far more terrifying than hunting down the sniper who had blown her father’s head off. But Foggy was right. He needed to let the police do their job. There was no reason to put on the mask. Yet.

The 15th Precinct had an aura of stress about it. Overworked, understaffed police no longer milled around talking about last night’s game, sipping coffee from styrofoam cups. Everyone was always on the move, exchanging short words. Exhaustion hung over the place like a shroud.

Officer Brett Mahoney had always been a little terse with the two of them. It was his solemn duty as a police officer to give defense attorneys a hard time, and Murdock and Nelson returned in kind. But lately there was a real edge in his voice, a sharpness in his demeanor that wasn’t there before.

“I don’t have time for you two today,” Brett said.

“You never have time for us,” Foggy said. “We’re here to meet with a client. Toby Edwards?”

Brett didn’t even bother to give them a hard time. He handed the file off to Foggy. “Room four.”

An officer was still getting Edwards out of lockup when the two of them sat down in the interrogation room. Foggy started going through the file.

“I only see a charge for underage drinking here.”

“They don’t have anything to charge him with murder. They’re either trying to coerce a confession, or scare him into giving up a bigger fish.”

At least half a dozen gangs had invaded Hell’s Kitchen, rushing to fill the void Fisk and his allies left behind. They were all small-time and disorganized, but violent and hungry for power. Putting away the shotcallers, the men at the top, was the only way to stop the plague from spreading.

Their client was escorted in. He slouched down in his chair with an air of nonchalance, but Matt could hear his heart pounding. He was scared.

Matt and Foggy introduced themselves.

“Did my mom send you?” Edwards asked.

“She did,” Foggy said. “She’s worried about you.” That made the boy’s heart beat even faster.

“Man. I didn’t do anything.”

“Why don’t you start by telling us what happened?” Matt suggested.

“I was just chilling with my boys on the corner, you know? Having a smoke and drinking - uh, drinking some pepsi.”

“You blew a .12 on the breathalyzer last night,” Foggy said, shuffling through the file. _And I can still smell alcohol through your pores_. “We know you weren’t drinking a soda.”

“We need you to be completely honest with us,” Matt said. “Anything you tell us is just between the three of us in this room.”

“You mean they ain’t listening behind that mirror?”

“No,” Foggy said. “That would be illegal. We’re not the cops. We’re here to help you.” The kid seemed to relax a little after this.

“Okay, so, we were just chilling there, drinking, whatever. Not bothering anybody. Then these two guys roll up, talking shit. Wearing enemy colors. One of my boys took out his piece. I didn’t think he was going to shoot nobody, you know? Just scare them off. Shit, I didn’t even think it was loaded. But then...then...then he just shot them.” Edwards’s breathing was rapid, his heart beating even faster. He had started to sweat. The kid hadn’t seen anyone get shot before.

“The people you were with - they’re members of the Enforcers?” Matt asked. That was the gang named on the news.

“Yeah.”

“But you’re not affiliated with the gang yourself?” Foggy said.

“No. I’ve known them since we were kids, man. They’re my friends.”

“What about the shooter?” Matt asked. “Was he your friend as well?”

“No, not him.” Edwards began to fidget beneath the table when the discussion turned to this man. “A friend of a friend, that kind of thing.”

“Can you give us his name?” Matt said. If the police couldn’t track him down, the devil of Hell’s Kitchen should be able to.

Edwards sucked his teeth. “Man, I ain’t no snitch.”

“Both of the people he shot died,” Foggy said. “Did you know they weren’t actually affiliated with any gang? They were just giving you guys a hard time.”

The kid took a deep, ragged breath.

“We can convince the police not to charge you with anything related to the shooting,” Matt said. The underage drinking charge would stick, but that was a misdemeanor. He’d get a few hours community service at worst. “But we need to have the name of that shooter.” The police really didn’t have enough to stick a murder charge, but there were other, lesser charges that still carried a prison sentence that they might be able to press. And sending a scared eighteen-year-old kid to prison for even a few years pretty much ensured you’d get a hardened lifelong felon when he got out.

“You old white boys don’t get it. If the Enforcers hear I’ve been talking about them, they’ll kill me _and_ my mom.”

“Did he just call us old?” Foggy whispered.

Matt patted him on the shoulder. “I think we are, buddy.” Relative to kids like this, anyway.

“The police aren’t going to waste any time getting that shooter locked up,” Matt said. “You and your mom will be safe. We’ll make sure of that.”

Matt knew the boy was terrified, but he started to sense a shift in their client’s attitude as the boy leaned closer to the table. He decided to play the trump card.

“Your mom was _really_ worried about you. She’s over at our office right now. We can get the cops to release you into our custody, and then we can take you over there as soon as we’re done here.”

“My mom?” Edwards sounded hopeful for the first time. Eighteen was still so young, especially when you were in way over your head. “You swear we’ll be safe? You swear it?”

Matt nodded. The man in the mask would make sure of that.

“Okay.” The kid dropped his voice near a whisper. “I don’t know his real name. All I know is he goes by Ox. He ain’t very tall, but he’s real big.”

“That should be enough,” Matt said. _Enough for me_. He flexed his fists beneath the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Enforcers is kind of a goofy name for a gang, I think, but it (and some of its members, like Ox) are from the comics. I tried to source a lot of minor characters and organizations from the comics wherever I could in this story.


	3. Chapter 3

It was well known on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen that the narrow little rowhouse on 45th and 11th was an Enforcer hangout. Matt doubted the boss would be there, but his cronies would be. Although he and Foggy had turned over the information on Ox to the police, he didn’t want to waste any time, not when Edwards and his mother might be in danger. Or maybe, like Matt’s priest was fond of saying, he was just looking for an excuse to hit someone. Gang violence was a pretty damn good one.

A back window on the second floor was unlocked. Either someone had forgotten to lock it or these guys thought they were untouchable.

He paused to get a sense of his surroundings. Narrow stairs down the hall and to his left. Three heartbeats in the basement. Another, slow and weary, on the ground floor. Faint scent of carpet cleaner and marijuana.

Matt silently slunk down the stairs to the first floor. An old woman was sitting near the front of the house watching what sounded like a game show on tv. She had the ancient and musty smell, vaguely like mothballs, of every grandmother. Her heart beat only a little faster when she saw him.

“Oh my,” she said.

“Just stay there, ma’am,” Matt said quietly. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Well, alright.” She changed the channel on the TV. “Can you tell Darnell to take out the trash?”

“Uh...okay.” Matt went into the kitchen. They’d had chicken for dinner. A waist-high bag that smelled of rotting vegetables and rancid grease sat by the back door. He moved to where his sense of the basement was greatest, where the vibrations emanating from his footsteps on the floorboards told him there was a set of stairs, not ceiling tiles and insulation.

He found the light switch at the top of the stairs. _How convenient_. From his perspective, the only thing that changed when the lights went out was the amount of heat given off by the single lightbulb in the center of the basement.

“What the fuck?” one of them said.

“Shit,” said another. “I guess the damn bulb burned out.” There was the sound of several cell phone screens being turned on. Someone moved toward the stairs.

All three heartbeats sped up to a panic. _Father, forgive me_ , he thought, _but I do enjoy this part_.

One of the men started to scream, “It’s him! It’s him!” Matt jumped down the steps and kicked the man who had screamed in the stomach.

The one who obviously had the most sense backpedaled until he ran into the corner and doubled over, huddling there. The stupidest one grabbed the gun from his front pocket and cocked it, whirling around and aiming it in every possible direction.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The man Matt had just kicked shouted. “My auntie’s upstairs!”

Matt grabbed the man with the gun by the wrist and bent it back until the he cried out and dropped the weapon. Then Matt bent his wrist some more.

The man who had shouted about his aunt, presumably called Darnell, launched himself at Matt. Matt dodged aside and let him ram his fist into the concrete. Darnell cried out in pain. Matt grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed his head into the wall.

“You know Ox?”

“W-what?” Matt slammed his face into the wall again. Hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to break anything. _You get one warning_.

The man with the broken wrist charged them, managed to connect his good fist with Matt’s ribs even in the dark. Matt winced and brought his leg around, kicking the guy in the stomach and sending him sprawling.

“Ox,” Matt said to Darnell. “The leader of your little ‘club.’ Shot two people in cold blood last night.”

“I don’t know nothing, man! Nothing!” _Liar_. This time Matt broke his nose. The coppery smell of fresh blood filled the space between them.

The other man had gotten to his feet again. He was feeling around for the gun. Matt grabbed Darnell and threw him at his buddy like he was a bowling ball. He didn’t have time for this.

The two of them climbed on top of each other, fumbling in the darkened basement. Matt kicked the one whose name he didn’t know in the ribs once, twice, until he stayed down. He grabbed Darnell once more and the man groaned, bracing himself for the beating to come. Matt got him a chokehold, squeezed until the breath came out of him, and then released. Darnell was gasping.

“Tell me where he is. _Now_.” Matt knew the fastest way to get the information he needed was to threaten Darnell’s aunt, or whoever she was. But he wouldn’t lay a finger on the lady if they called his bluff, and he didn’t want it getting around that the devil of Hell’s Kitchen went around threatening to beat up old women while they sat at home watching tv.

With his arm still around Darnell's head, Matt hit him several more times before the thug started blubbering through his broken nose. “You don’t know how he is, man. Come on, man. He’s shot a guy for less.”

“He can’t shoot anyone from a cell at Rikers.”

“He’s holed up with his old lady.” It was the man huddled in the corner, the one who had stayed out of the fight. His heart was still racing, his breathing ragged, but he didn’t seem afraid. Was he...excited? _Maybe he has his own score to settle with Ox_. Or he had one serious fetish about watching his friends get beaten up.

“Where?” Matt demanded. He kept Darnell in the chokehold, just in case.

“Third floor apartment above the Chinese place, three blocks down.”

“What the fuck are you doing, man?” Darnell whispered. “Ox's going to kill you!” Matt slammed his fist into his face one last time and then let him go. Darnell slumped to the floor, moaning.

“Get out of Hell’s Kitchen,” Matt hissed. “I won’t be so gentle next time.”

Before they could react, Matt bounded up the stairs and grabbed the foul-smelling bag from the kitchen. He went out the back door of the house and tossed the trash into a plastic bin, hopped the fence into an alley, and took off toward the distant scent of noodles and fish sauce.

This late at night, the restaurant was closed, but the smell of all the meals they had cooked during the day still lingered, a thin film of grease clinging to the air. Matt pulled himself onto the fire escape and went up to the third floor, but he paused outside of the window. The wannabe thugs down at the townhouse were small fry, blazed half out of their minds. That they had been easy to subdue didn’t mean their boss would be as well. Their boss who obviously had no qualms about shooting people. Their boss that they were terrified of. Matt’s suit should protect him from lethal gunshots, but in the close confines of an apartment he knew he had to be careful.

He crouched beneath the window and strained his ears, blocking out all the sound from the streets below, concentrating on the interior of the apartment. Two people, heartbeats slow and steady. The stink of sweat and sex still hanging in the air. They were asleep in a bed just feet from the window.

The woman was another potential complication. As far as Matt knew, her only crime was poor taste in men, and he had a hard enough time hurting women who actually deserved it. _Call me old-fashioned_ , he liked to say. He could only hope she didn’t like this Ox guy _too_ much and took off when he told her to.

_No time like the present_ , he thought. _And nothing like the element of surprise_.

Matt crashed through the window shoulder first and skidded into the center of the little bedroom. Thousands of tiny glass shards clattered to the floor like drops of rain. The woman immediately jumped out of bed screaming, but the man went for something beneath his head.

“Get out,” Matt growled at her. He heard the safety of a gun click off beneath the pillow and dodged into the corner as a bullet cut through the space where he had just been standing. A hail of feathers thickened the air. Matt heard another bullet chamber itself automatically. Another shot was coming. He dropped to the floor as another bullet whizzed past and crawled toward the queen-sized mattress. The big man rolled across it.

“Get _out_!” Matt shouted at the woman again. She had run a few feet toward the door but froze once the shooting started.

The butt of the gun was rapidly approaching the crown of Matt’s head. He rolled away and it hit him on the shoulder, which hurt like hell but was preferable to the top of his skull. The armor on his suit protected him well against penetrating injuries, but didn’t do as much for blunt force.

Matt slid under the bed and army-crawled to the other side, bypassing a filthy pair of men’s underwear. _I could have lived without that_.

Ox was every bit as wide as his name implied, and so was at a disadvantage rolling from one side of the mattress to the other, like a beetle on its back. When Matt popped up from the other side of bed, Ox was trying to take aim once more. Matt kicked the gun out of his hand and it went skidding amongst the glass on the floor. He grabbed a lamp from the nightstand and smashed it over Ox’s head. The man had a thick skull. The blow caused him to bleed, but it hadn't come close to knocking him out. Matt jammed his fist into Ox’s solar plexus. It was like hitting a side of beef.

Ox sat up on the bed and jabbed one meaty fist into Matt’s ribs. Nothing broke, but it knocked the wind right out of him. He managed to duck out of the way of the next blow as he gasped for air. There was a sudden movement behind him. _She’s going for the gun_.

“Shoot him!” Ox screamed at her. “Shoot him, you dumb fucking cunt!” The pistol was rattling in the woman’s shaking hand. “What the hell is wrong with you, bitch? Shoot this fucker!”

“I told you not to call me that!” As she spoke, her voice grew stronger, her hands more steady. “And I told you not to come over here stinking like your side bitch.”

_Oh Lord_. “Put the gun _down_ ,” Matt said as calmly as he could. Of all the scenarios he had envisioned, a lovers’ quarrel had not occurred to him. Ox kept hurling more and more disgusting insults at the woman, and with each one, her heart beat a little faster, her grip on the pistol a little stronger.

Matt punched him in the face. Ox grabbed Matt with both fists and hurled him across the room. The gun went off as he was midair, unable to change his momentum fast enough to stop her. _No_! Matt got to his feet and snatched the gun out of her hand and threw it out of the open window.

“You shot me, you dumb bitch! You fucking shot me! Oh, you are dead now, you stupid whore!” Ox lumbered out of bed and the woman screamed and finally ran out of the room.

Ox’s breathing and heart rate were rapid, but normal for the middle of a fight. His heart and lungs were not injured. His right arm hung limp at his side. _She must have shot him in the shoulder_ , Matt thought. A non-fatal wound.

Matt decided to leverage this new development and grabbed for the man’s body and shoved his thumb in the bullet hole. Ox howled and tried to strike out with his left arm. Matt kneed him in the groin. The man was stark naked and Matt’s knees were armor plated.

As Ox sunk to the floor in a haze of pain, Matt pulled one of the sheets off the bed and knotted it, pulled both of Ox’s wrists behind his back and tied his arms to the bed post. He could hear the sirens approaching outside. The cops were on their way after all the gunshots at the apartment. Matt decided to wrap the other sheet around the larger man's chest and tie that to the bed as well, just in case.

“Who was it that told you?” Ox said. “Huh? That little faggot, Fancy Dan?”

Matt answered with a series of blows to the face until he was certain the big man wasn’t going anywhere for the rest of the night. Ox was still slinging threats and expletives through his broken teeth. Matt shoved the dirty underwear in his mouth and jumped out the window.


	4. Chapter 4

Elektra had to double check the GPS on her phone to make sure she was at the right place. The little blue dot on the map said that this was the office of Nelson and Murdock, but she was parked in front of a diner. Above the greasy windows and flickering neon signs there were several stories of old tan brick that looked like they might pass for office space.

She got out of her Porsche and locked it. She probably should have taken a cab here. _I guess we’ll see if Nelson and Murdock really are making Hell’s Kitchen a safer place_. Around the corner she saw a small bronze sign mounted to the side of the building. _Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law_. It looked like Google Maps was telling the truth.

A narrow set of steps led to the second floor. The first door in the drab little hallway read Nelson and Murdock on the frosted glass. Elektra rapped on the door twice with her knuckles before letting herself in.

A woman seated at the desk did a double take when Elektra entered. Very pretty, very leggy, very blonde. Elektra wondered how many times Matt had slept with her.

The woman recovered her composure and gave Elektra a practiced smile. “Can I help you?”

Elektra looked around. The space was small, the floors scuffed. Paint was peeling off one of the walls near an overworked coffee pot. She wondered if they had mice.

“The Benz dealership is on 53rd.” A man came out of the office to her right. He was around her age and well-dressed, but a suit jacket and fourteen karat gold tie clip couldn’t disguise a buffoon.

“Foggy Nelson.” Elektra pointed at his chin-length blonde hair. “Good to see you got out of your hippie phase. Mostly.”

The woman at the desk giggled, looked at Foggy in surprise. “You had a hippie phase?”

“Nooo,” he said, drawing out the word in a way that was anything but convincing.

“He did,” Elektra said to the woman. “I’m sure I have photographic proof of it somewhere.”

“‘Proof,’” Foggy scoffed.

“I heard you lawyerly types like that sort of thing.” Elektra sat on the corner of the woman’s desk and leaned in with a conspiratorial air. “You really work for these clowns?”

“I do. Oh, uh…” The woman extended her hand. “Karen Page.”

Elektra shook it. “Elektra Natchios.”

Karen’s eyes widened for a moment. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Elektra glanced over at Foggy. “I’m sure you have.”

“So...do you actually have a legal question, or…?” Foggy trailed off.

Elektra stood up. “I just wanted to check out the legendary offices of Nelson and Murdock.” There was a small conference room and another office across from where Foggy stood that she assumed belonged to Matt. “I guess I’m looking at all of them.”

She pointed at a yellowing plastic box on the table next to Karen’s desk. “What's that? A humidifier?”

“Fax machine,” Karen said, looking a little embarrassed.

“It even works,” Foggy said. “Finally.”

“Oh.” Elektra smiled awkwardly. Matt said they were still working on their first million. She wondered if they’d even managed to break ten grand. “Where’s Matt?”

“Out,” Foggy said flatly. _So,_ she thought _, I’m still not forgiven_. Elektra couldn’t blame him for that. She hadn’t forgiven herself either.

“Any idea when he’ll be back?”

“Nope.”

Karen looked between the two uncertainly. Maybe she hadn’t heard everything.

Elektra knew she could do the reasonable thing and leave. Foggy’s skeptical glare made it clear that his hospitality only extended to a point, and her car was probably going to get broken into. But she was a spoiled girl, and her first reaction to someone telling her no was to do it anyway.

“I’ll wait.” Elektra brought up a puzzle game on her phone. “I don’t suppose I can smoke in here?”

“No,” Karen and Foggy said in unison.

Elektra shrugged and took a seat in the chair in front of Karen’s desk, crossed her legs, and pulled out a pack of nicotine gum.

“So, um...you went to college with Foggy and Matt?” Karen said after a few minutes of silence punctuated only by the catchy electronic tune and beeps from the phone game.

Elektra looked up. “Yeah. Undergrad. I didn’t go to law school.” Foggy made a rude noise over by the coffee machine. “Is it always this busy in here?”

“We’ve got cases,” Foggy said defensively, crossing behind her back to his office. “We’re just...waiting on things.”

“If you say so.” Elektra went back to her game until Karen interrupted her again.

“What were they like? In college?” Karen’s blue eyes were wide with curiosity and a hint of mischief.

“Awesome,” Foggy called from his office.

“Same as they are now,” Elektra said. “Nerds. Only now they’re better dressed.”

Karen glanced over toward Foggy’s office and dropped her voice. “How long did you and Matt, um, you know...date?”

“A year. Or two. Depends on if you count from the first date or the first time he fucked me.” Foggy choked on his coffee, spluttered and coughed.

“Oh, um…” Karen giggled a little awkwardly. “Did he really wait a whole year?”

“Dorms,” Elektra said. “And a girl should always play hard to get. Why? Did he sleep with you right away?” A crash came from Foggy’s office.

“Me? What - oh.” Karen turned bright red. “Oh, no, no, we didn’t...we haven’t, um...no.”

Elektra arched an eyebrow and jerked her thumb toward Foggy’s office. “ _Him_?”

“No, no, no.” Karen looked mortified. “They’re my bosses.”

Foggy popped back out of the doorway. He also looked a little red in the face. “This isn’t an episode of _Mad Men_.”

Elektra looked around at the dingy little office. “Obviously not.”

“Matt said you travel a lot?” Karen said, switching the subject.

“Yeah, I’m not exactly sure what it is you _do_ ,” said Foggy.

“My father does - er, did - a lot of business in Japan, which is kind of an art, you know. Making deals with the Japanese. They’re big on manners. And it turns out I’m a lot better at Japanese manners than American ones.”

“Didn’t you take Spanish in college?” Foggy asked.

Elektra nodded. “Most of the time I just copied Matt’s homework. I’m not great with European manners either.”

Karen and Elektra made small talk for a while, and then she heard a familiar tapping sound out in the hallway. One day many years ago, she had heard that sound on campus and felt her heart pounding, her stomach doing flips, and she realized right there that she liked him. _Like_ -liked him. Matt must have guessed it too, because he asked her out for coffee a week after that.

As Matt came in the door, Karen said, “Matt, your, um...your friend came to visit. Elektra?” Karen said her name like she was unsure Matt would recognize it.

He was wearing a gray suit and a red tie. He looked very good in a suit and tie.

“Did you drive here?” Matt asked Elektra. He propped his cane in the corner near the door.

“Yeah.”

“I thought that was your car I banged into.”

Elektra jumped out of her chair. “ _What_?”

Matt was laughing. “Just kidding. But seriously, it’s going to rain.”

“Oh, shit.” She dug her key fob out of her purse and went over to the window. Elektra flicked the lock on the window and old, moldering wood screeched and whined as she pushed it open. She stuck half her body out on the sill and pointed the fob out as close as she could to the car down on the curb.

“Please reach,” she said to it.

“Try not to fall out,” Foggy said, not at all sincerely.

Elektra mashed the button for the roof on her key fob, straining to get within range, until she saw the back of her car flip open, and the black fabric roof automatically unfolded itself over the top of the seats.

Karen poked her head out the window behind her. “You really think it’s going to rain? It’s just a little cloudy.” The sky was gray-blue, a little overcast, but none of the clouds were black and heavy.

“If Matt says it’s going to rain, it’s going to rain,” Elektra told her. She closed the window and locked it. “He’s more accurate than any of the people that get paid to predict the weather - not that that’s saying much.”

“As long as you don’t mind getting your forecast about three minutes in advance,” Matt said, smirking. “So, did Karen give you the grand tour?”

“There’s a tour?” Elektra asked. “I mean, I can just turn my head.”

“Very funny,” Matt said. Elektra followed him into his office. “I’m guessing you don’t need a lawyer.”

“Well...there’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You could have asked me,” Foggy called from the doorway. Elektra shut the door in his face.

“Okay.” Matt motioned for her to sit across from his desk.

When she went to put her jacket on the back of the chair, she caught two pairs of eyes staring at them from behind the glass that connected to the reception area.

“They’re watching us.”

“They do that.” Matt got up and pulled the blinds shut. “I thought you didn’t want my help.”

Elektra frowned. Of course he remembered that. Of course he was going to throw that back in her face. “I don’t…it’s not...” She let out a heavy sigh. _Dammit, Matt_. “Will you just listen?”

“Alright.” He looked a little pleased at her floundering. _You are so annoying_.

Elektra pulled a little steel key out of a zippered pocket in her bag and pressed it into Matt’s hand. “This is the key to a safety deposit box.” She gave him the address of the bank. “I just want you to hang onto it for me.”

When she went to pull her hand away, Matt grabbed her around the wrist. His grip was like a vise. “Are you in trouble?”

“No,” she said carefully. Technically, that wasn’t a lie. She wasn’t in trouble. Yet.

“Elektra.” His voice had grown quiet, his face stone. He was almost scary like this. “Tell me what’s going on.”

_He knows when you’re lying_ , she thought. _He always knows_. “I can’t,” she whispered.

Matt relaxed his grip on her arm, but he still looked angry. “Is someone threatening you?”

“No.”

He sat thinking for a moment. “Have you done something against the law?”

“I don’t know.” She had done plenty against the law, but this - the contents of that safety deposit box - she had no idea what role she had played in all of that.

“You don’t know if it was illegal?”

“I don’t know what I did.”

“You don’t…” Matt trailed off, frowning. “Will you please just tell me what’s going on?”

Elektra’s breath caught in her throat. This was five years ago all over again. _Please_ , he had said. The look on his face had nearly killed her. _Just tell me why_.

“I can’t.” Her answer was always the same. It suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea what she was doing here. What she thought was going to happen. “I’m sorry. I never should have asked.” When she went to grab the key, he snatched it away.

“Nothing you say to me will leave this room,” he said. “I don’t care what it is.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. _For everything_.

Because he couldn’t see, she had always worried about him getting lost, or feeling lost, even though she knew he did just fine on his own. Maybe it was some vestige of a maternal instinct - and she didn’t have many of those. The day she had left him five years ago, he looked _so_ lost.

He just looked mad now. That was better. She could handle mad. “Is that all you’re going to say? That you can’t tell me anything? That you’re _sorry_?” He made her sound like such a hypocrite. Maybe she was.

“Yes.” She almost apologized again. “Are you going to give me that key back?”

“No,” Matt said.

“Are you going to look in the safety deposit box?”

“I don’t know, Elektra. I don’t know how else I’m going to figure out what the hell is going on with you.”

Elektra sighed. She was going to have to move it. She couldn’t risk Matt bringing those papers back to his office or his home just yet. Even though they were handwritten in Greek, she knew he’d figure out a way to read them. And sooner or later the people who had killed her father would come looking for them.

Her reflection stared back at her in Matt’s red sunglasses. She looked small. Pathetic. _What do you think you’re doing_? the reflection seemed to say. _What right do you have to be here_?

“I shouldn’t have come here.” Elektra got up and grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and didn’t bother to put it on. “I won’t trouble you again.”

Matt didn’t say anything, but he followed her out of his office. For a second, she thought he was going to grab her, force her back in. Elektra didn’t even look at the other two as she left, ran down the stairs and onto the sidewalk.

He was right. It was raining. She pressed her back against the wet brick facade and got a lighter and a pack of cigarettes out of her purse. _You stupid, stupid bitch_. Every time she managed to get the lighter to spark, the rain extinguished it before she could get a light.

“God dammit!” Elektra threw the lighter down into the street. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_. She was so used to people rolling over for her that she forgot Matt was different. How could she forget that? It was what she liked about him. It was why they could never be together.

She got in her car and drove down to the bank.

 

\----------

 

“She left practically in tears and you look like you want to hit someone. So that went exactly as expected,” said Foggy.

Matt went back into his office and slammed the door.

Foggy waited until Karen had left for the day to ask, although Matt had heard the two of them whispering about it for half of the afternoon. Karen wanted to take him out for drinks.

“Matt’s not exactly a ‘get drunk and talk about his feelings’ type of guy,” Foggy told her.

“Are you alright?” He asked Matt now.

“Fine.”

“You’re not the only one who can tell when someone’s lying, you know.”

Matt shook his head, rubbed his forehead. Elektra Natchios couldn’t ask for help like a normal person. She couldn’t do anything like a normal person.

Matt held up the key. “She gave me this.”

“I’m guessing that’s _not_ a key to her place.”

“Safety deposit box. She asked me ‘to hold onto it.’ And then refused to say why.”

Foggy sighed. “And you took it anyway. Sounds about right.”

“I took it because this might be the only way to figure out what the hell is going on with her. She’s in trouble, Foggy.”

Foggy made a frustrated sound and sat down in the chair opposite Matt’s desk. “That’s not your problem, man. She was the one who left _you_ , remember?”

Matt grimaced. _Thanks for the reminder_. “Her dad’s dead, Foggy. Murdered. The cops don’t have any leads. That’s enough to drive a lot of people to desperate measures, and Elektra’s not exactly the most level-headed to start with.”

“Are you going to put on the mask?” Foggy asked quietly.

_I wouldn’t even know where to start_. Matt shook the key. “I’m going to the bank.”

 

\----------

 

The bank where Elektra had reserved the safety deposit box was in Midtown, the sort of place Matt doubted he could get an account even if he brought his entire savings to the table. Vaulted ceilings. Gold cuff links on marble counters. The smell of money right off the mint.

One of the tellers took Matt to a back room where the deposit boxes were kept. The teller fiddled with his key and the vibrations radiated up and out through rows upon rows of metal boxes. Most of them held either paper or jewelry. A couple had actual bullion inside. One of them held a VHS tape.

“Here you go, sir.” The teller set the box on the table in the center of the room. The only thing inside was another key. Small, but a slightly different shape than the one she’d given him this morning. It didn’t have a tag or any numbers engraved on the side.

Matt held it up. “Do you know what this goes to?”

“That’s not one of ours, sir.” Elektra’s perfume still hung about the walls and clung to the corners of the room. She had been here no more than two hours ago. Enough time for her to take anything she didn’t want him getting his hands on. More than enough time for her to go where he couldn’t follow.

Matt put both keys in his pocket and left.


	5. Chapter 5

Elektra spent the next week at the company office like she was a real person with a real job. Her personal office was spacious and immaculately clean, with a big mahogany desk and leather chairs. The only decorations on the walls were an old McLaren Racing poster and her degree from Columbia. She had a few pictures of her friends, but none of her father. She hadn’t needed any when he had been a short elevator ride away. The room looked more like the model office a realtor would use to sell the space than a place where someone actually worked.

A morning down in the copy room and a couple reams of paper changed all that. There were now piles upon piles of reports stacked on the shelves and papers spread out all over the desk. She flicked a highlighter between her fingers like she knew what to do with it.

Elektra had pulled a report of every transaction on her father’s personal bank accounts (accounts that were now hers) for the last two years. Going through it felt shameful, like going through someone’s underwear drawer, but she needed to see if the massive amounts of money from the strange transactions she found in his secret ledger had gone through his private finances. He wouldn’t be so careless as to deposit it in one lump sum, so she had to cross-reference any amount that seemed higher than it should be - a task that would have been a lot easier if she knew the first thing about investments and dividends and mutual funds. After several days she had finally worked her way through it and felt satisfied that the money wasn’t in there. Which was a relief, since that was her money now.

After that, she had gone down to the accounting department and forced them to send her the company’s financial records. She had made up a lie about wanting to understand more about the inner workings of the company now that she was the majority shareholder, which she didn’t think the CFO believed, but seeing as she _was_ the majority shareholder, he had to oblige her.

The company records made her father’s personal accounts look like a piggy bank. She spent half a day trying to look at the spreadsheets and documents on her computer, only to end up feeling cross-eyed with a splitting headache. So, she went back down to the copy room and printed it all out. When the people down there gave her a questioning look, she said, “What? I’ll recycle it.”

Laundering the money through the company was a likely scenario, but she put off investigating that until she made sure her personal finances were clean. She didn’t want to consult any of her coworkers because she had no idea who knew about what, and - far more importantly - wasn’t satisfied that the all of the people in this office were innocent of her father’s murder. It didn’t matter that the police claimed they were all cleared. She knew more than the cops.

Elektra wrote the dates she had memorized from the ledger on a post-it note and stuck it to her monitor for reference. Before she left at night, she shredded the post-it and rewrote it in the morning.

 _This is an absolute nightmare_ , she thought, looking down at all the papers scattered before her. She put her head down on the desk. Finding out where that money ended up and how it got there was her best, and maybe only chance at finding out who had her father killed. Both she and the police were convinced that the gunman had been paid to do the job. A hired assassin. The shot was too perfect, too clean, to just be anybody with a grudge and a rifle. So that meant there were two people she needed to find. Needed to make pay. The person who pulled the trigger and the person who had paid him to.

Just when she thought she was about to start speaking in numbers and figures like some kind of robot, her desk phone rang. She was so absorbed in her work that the sudden noise made her jump up in her chair like a startled cat. The ID on the display said it was from the main receptionist. _If this is a fucking reporter_ … Elektra had specifically told her to hang up on any press immediately. She picked up the phone.

“There’s a Matt Murdock calling for you, Miss Natchios. He says it’s important.” Elektra let out a long sigh. _Matt motherfucking Murdock_. “Do you want me to take a message?”

 _He probably wants to grill me some more_ , she thought. He would have found the key to the second deposit box if he had gone to the bank, and she was sure he had. But it was her fault. She had gone to him in the first place. Stupidly, stupidly gone to him.

“Put him through.” The line beeped once and then she heard Matt on the other end.

“Hello? Elektra?”

“Hi, Matt.” It was a lot easier to be cold to him over the phone, when she didn’t have to look at him in his obnoxious, smiling face.

“I’m sorry to bother you at work,” he said quickly. “I didn’t know any other way to get a hold of you.”

“What is it?”

“I just wanted to apologize for the other day, at my office.”

 _Oh my God,_ she thought. _You god damned boy scout_. “ _You_ want to apologize? What the hell for?”

“You came to see me. You asked me to do something for you, and all I did was ask you a thousand questions. I guess it’s hard for me to turn the lawyer off sometimes.”

Elektra really didn’t know what to say. So she just sat there with a couple of words half-formed on her lips.

“Look,” he went on. “I _know_ what you’re going through. And it sucks. Whatever happened with us before…” He trailed off for a moment. “You need a friend right now. Not a lawyer. If you need someone to talk to, or just go for a drive or something...you can call me. I mean, if you want. I promise I won’t give you the third degree.”

“Okay.” Her voice caught in her throat. She thought she might be crying. _Why are you doing this_? _Why do you think I deserve this_? She would never understand why he didn’t just tell her to fuck off.

“You don’t have to go through this alone,” Matt said.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Do you have my number now?”

She looked down at the caller ID display on the phone. She had to wipe her eyes to see it clearly. “Yeah.”

“Okay, well...I’ll be here, if you need me.”

“Okay.” She still couldn’t think of anything to say to him.

After she got off the phone, she spent a long time staring at the numbers on the little LED display. They were just numbers. They didn’t mean anything. But he had just thrown her a buoy in a churning, dark storm.

She knew she couldn’t get him mixed up in all of this. He’d never understand. And worse, someone might try to hurt him. But the pull of their younger, happier days was too strong. She was too selfish. She wasn’t like him. She remembered what it was like not to feel alone.

Elektra got out her cell phone and added Matt Murdock to her contacts.

 

\----------

 

Matt sat beside Foggy in the back of the courtroom, listening to Carl Hoffman’s lawyer spout a bunch of oily bullshit to the jury.

Hoffman may have been willing to tell all at first, but later claimed he was coerced, claimed he was as much a victim of Fisk as anyone else. When Nelson and Murdock refused to play along, Hoffman had fired them. Now he had a fancy slimeball attorney strongarming the State in exchange for Hoffman’s testimony. And he wasn’t the only one. Senator Cherryh, Parrish Landman, and half a dozen of Fisk’s former (surviving) associates were all cutting the same kind of deals to bring down the man at the top. Matt couldn’t imagine what that was like for the prosecution. Making deals with devils.

Hoffman had spent the long months awaiting his trial segregated from the general population at Rikers Island to protect him from Fisk, or anyone who thought the world might be better with one less crooked cop. The longer he was locked up, the less he feared retribution from the man in the mask, but began to contemplate the very real danger of life in prison for a former police officer. Matt really didn’t care what happened to Hoffman once he and Fisk and all the rest were convicted.

He and Foggy came to court to see exactly what it was Hoffman had pleaded to in the end, and what sort of sentence he was going to end up serving. Matt had already resigned himself to the fact that it would be less than he deserved. _This is why I do what I do,_ he thought, _when people fall through the cracks_. He decided it probably wasn’t the best time to get into this with Foggy again.

They sat on the side of the prosecution. There had already been several days of testimony. Of all the things Hoffman had initially been charged with, the D.A. had taken the murder of his former partner, Detective Blake, the most seriously. Hoffman had decided to roll the dice and take it to the jury. And his attorney had decided to roll the dice by putting his client on the stand.

His attorney was a man called Lawrence Cranston, a former ambulance chaser who had transitioned into criminal law. According to Foggy, he had terrible billboards up all over the city with the tagline ‘ _Cranston Cares_.’ Also according to Foggy, Cranston had veneers on his teeth and hairplugs, although Matt was less inclined to believe that. Regardless of what he looked like, Cranston epitomized everything that caused the legal profession to be the butt of so many jokes. But he wasn’t stupid.

“Can you explain to the court why you went to the police and offered a confession?” Cranston knew the taped confession Hoffman had given nine months ago was the most damning evidence against his client. Fisk had made almost all the physical and forensic evidence disappear into ‘a black hole,’ as Karen would say.

“The masked man threatened to kill me,” Hoffman said. “I had no choice.”

The judge and the lawyers had some back and forth about exactly how to refer to the vigilante for the purpose of the proceedings. Foggy didn’t say anything, but Matt knew he was bristling at the talk of Daredevil. Matt was willing to concede that running around in a mask in the middle of the night could possibly cause a few legal complications, but they wouldn’t be here at all if the devil of Hell’s Kitchen hadn’t put the fear of God into Carl Hoffman.

“Now, Detective Hoffman, you say the Masked Man threatened you. Can you tell the court exactly what happened?”

“I was hiding out in an abandoned garage in Hell’s Kitchen. I hired a few guys to protect me.”

“You hired some men to protect you? Why is that?”

“I was afraid he would come for me. After what he did to Detective Blake…” Hoffman was nervous, fidgeting, his heart pounding and betraying his lies. But the same nerves exhibited by a liar could very well look like fear of ‘the Masked Man’ to the jury.

“Tell us what happened that night, Detective,” Cranston said.

“I don’t know how, but he found me. He killed all my guards. Then he put a gun to my head and told me if I didn’t do and say everything he told me to, I would wish he’d shot me.”

“What did he tell you to do?”

“He told me to go down to the 15th Precinct and speak with Officer Brett Mahoney.”

“Officer Mahoney? Is this the same Officer Mahoney who was guarding Detective Blake’s room the night he was killed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the same Officer Mahoney who captured Wilson Fisk after the Masked Man turned him over?”

“Objection!” shouted the prosecutor

“Sustained,” said the judge.

Matt was furious. _I can’t believe they’re throwing Brett under the bus_.

“Incredible,” Foggy muttered in disgust.

“Did the Masked Man say anything else?”

“He told me what to say to Officer Mahoney. He told me to pretend like it was all true.”

“Are you talking about the things you said on State’s Exhibit 201, the video tape?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So was _anything_ you said on that tape true?”

“No, sir. It was what the Masked Man told me to say. I know I shouldn’t have lied, and I’m sorry.” _Bullshit_ , Matt thought. “But I was terrified. He’d already killed people before.”

Cranston then went into the death of Detective Blake, which Hoffman vehemently blamed on the man in the mask, insisting he had only narrowly escaped death himself that night. Matt was used to keeping his cool in the courtroom while people on the stand perjured themselves, but that was because he knew he would have an opportunity to cross examine the witnesses and trip them up in their own lies. Sitting in the gallery while someone maligned _him_ was nearly unbearable.

The prosecution did its best to show Hoffman was full of shit during their cross examination, but his lawyer was slick, objecting to nearly question and drawing out the proceedings. The judge then called it a day, saying they would hear closing arguments tomorrow. It would all come down to whether the jury believed the Hoffman on the tapes or the Hoffman sitting in court now.

As the bailiffs began to cuff Hoffman, and others in the courtroom shuffled out, Matt stayed seated, listening to what was waiting for them outside, trying to get control of his anger.

A large crowd of press had gathered on the steps of the courthouse like a swarm of birds, squawking and circling. If he concentrated enough, he could parse out the individual voices.

“-waiting for crooked cop, Carl Hoffman-”

“-taking the stand today-”

“-of Wilson Fisk, whose trial is scheduled for later in the year-”

None of them really cared. About the law, about Hell’s Kitchen, about anything other than the numbers on their paycheck and the hits on their webpage. The absence of Ben Urich was keenly felt.

Hoffman was escorted out a side door, but his lawyer went out and greeted the throng head on. Matt didn’t bother trying to listen to Cranston pander to the press. He knew it would just make him even angrier than he already was.

Matt and Foggy waited until the courtroom had cleared out before gathering their things and heading toward the courthouse doors.

“How much trouble do you think we’d be in if we kicked that guy’s ass?” Foggy said.

“I’m almost willing to risk it.” Matt thought Foggy might be even more furious than he was. He’d known Brett since they were small and, as far as Foggy was concerned, the only person allowed to give Brett a hard time was him.

“I think-” Matt started to say something but fell silent. He could hear a police cruiser idling outside. “Hoffman just got out there,” Matt whispered. The vibrations of dozens of feet rushing down the front stairs confirmed it. Defendants didn’t go out the front doors with the public, but they had to pass by the front steps to get picked up and dropped off.

The barrage of questions against Hoffman was so sudden and intense Matt couldn’t make out who was saying what. The only thing he was sure of was that Cranston’s slimy voice was not among them. He didn’t understand why Hoffman’s attorney wasn’t out there right with him - if only to hog the spotlight.

 _Wait_ , Matt thought. Nothing in or outside the courthouse had changed, but Matt’s fingers began to twitch. There was something like the rumble of thunder in the distance.

“Something’s wrong,” he said to Foggy. Matt’s whole body tensed, like he was about to break into a sprint, but he was too late. The writhing press outside the courthouse descended into such a sudden silence, a sudden stillness, it was like time itself had stopped.

Then it erupted into chaos.

A woman screaming. Feet pounding on concrete. Police sirens. It wasn’t thunder that Matt heard. It was a gunshot.

Before the people in the courthouse could react, a pair of guards ran to the front doors with weapons drawn and slammed them shut.

“Everyone, please stay calm,” one of them commanded. “Get away from the windows. Go into courtroom number one. We’re on lockdown.” Someone in the hallway started to sob and several people demanded to know what was going on.

“Please, go into the courtroom,” the guard said curtly. So much for everyone staying calm. All around him were racing hearts and quivering hands. Matt’s own heart had sped up too, but not because he was afraid for his own safety. There was something much more frightening at stake.

“Jesus Christ,” Foggy muttered. The guards shepherded them along with the crowd.

“Who was it?” Hoffman’s defense attorney demanded as he ran down the hallway into the courtroom. _What the hell_? Matt thought. _He came back inside_? “Who was shot?” There was something _off_ about the panic in his voice. And the guard hadn’t said anything about a shooting.

“Please, calm down sir. We’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as we can.”

“My client was out there!” He was screaming. “My client!”

Without thinking, Matt flexed his fist. His cane wasn’t particularly strong, but it stung like a bitch when you got smacked with it. Matt would know. Stick had nailed him enough times as a kid.

Foggy grabbed his wrist. “Sit down,” he hissed. Reluctantly, Matt sat down beside him on one of the benches near the back of the courtroom.

“That guy knows something about this,” Matt said.

“And there will be a time and a place to find out exactly what he knows, which is not here in front of two dudes with _guns_.”

Matt swallowed his rage. He distracted himself by trying to determine what was going on outside the courthouse. There was definitely blood out there. A lot of it.

“Someone’s been shot,” Matt whispered to Foggy. “Dead.”

“Was it Hoffman?” Foggy sounded afraid to even vocalize the question.

“I don’t know,” Matt said. A live body made a hell of a lot more identifying noise than a dead one.

The guards’ radios began to buzz as cops began to call in the all clear for each of the buildings surrounding the courthouse.

The sound Matt had heard was too far away to be a shooter on the steps of the courthouse itself, or even someone in the street. That the cops were sweeping nearby buildings only confirmed it. _A sniper_ , he thought. _Just like Elektra’s dad_.

“This is bad,” he said to Foggy. “This is really bad.”

 

\----------

 

Elektra flopped around on her couch like a fish dying on a dock. Her bed felt too big, too empty for her to fall asleep last night, so she had gone out to her living room with a pillow and blanket, but she couldn’t get comfortable out here, either. She watched dawn creep in between the blinds while some washed up celebrity tried to sell her diet pills on the television.

Nothing felt right anymore. Like she was looking at life through a lens that was distorted and cracked. Or maybe that’s what she had been doing all along, and now the rose-tinted daydream was over. She realized she hadn’t ever really understood the meaning of the word _bittersweet_ before. It wasn’t simply mixed feelings or conflicting emotions. It was desperately wanting to live in the past when you knew you couldn’t escape the future. The days of champagne and swimming pools and blissful ignorance would always come to an end.

The normal people in New York City would be getting up right now, getting ready for their normal jobs and going about their normal lives. A lot of them had probably lost people they cared about too. But most of them didn’t have the luxury of lying around and wallowing in self-pity and self-loathing, grief and unfettered anger. They had kids to feed and mortgages to pay. _The world doesn’t stop just for you_.

Elektra kept telling herself that it would be different if the cops had caught the guy who killed her father. If she could look him in the eye and spit in his face and laugh when the prison doors slammed shut behind him. But deep down she knew that wasn’t true. None of that would ever bring her father back. And she would have to sit and listen to that monster talk about her father like his life was just a thing to be taken, whether in apathy or feigned remorse or homicidal glee.

She heard stories of those who had forgiven the people who had murdered their loved ones. Prayed for them. _What the fuck is wrong with you people_? She didn’t believe God gave out silver medals for kindness. He gave out opportunities. It was up to you what you did with them.

After a while she fell into a fitful, uncomfortable sleep, waking in the late afternoon as the sun was going down. She was living like a vampire. She got up and went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. Why was it that as soon as she started doing something she felt exhausted, but was wide awake whenever she laid down? The hot water did little to help the languid feeling that had crept into her bones.

Elektra towel dried her hair and threw on a clean pair of underwear and a tank top. When she went back in the living room, whatever had been on tv before had transitioned to breaking news.

“-situation is still developing at the courthouse, but we have confirmation that at least one person is dead.”

“Damn,” Elektra said. She grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.

“-exclusive footage of the shooting. We have to warn you, the following clip is very graphic.”

A dark-skinned black man, shackled at the wrists, was flanked by two police officers as he descended the stairs of the courthouse. All three were wearing bulletproof vests. Suddenly, there was a boom and the side of the man’s bald head exploded like an overripe watermelon. He crumpled to the ground like there were no bones in his body.

Elektra’s own legs gave way and she sat staring at the tv, mesmerized by her horror. She hit pause on the DVR and stared at the frozen image, the man lying twisted on the steps with half his head blown away. The police escort with his face covered in blood and brains.

She rewound the DVR to the beginning of the clip and played it again. And again. And again. She was watching her father being murdered, over and over and over. So she could never forget what was done to him. So she would never forgive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like the Enforcers, Larry Cranston is a character I've decided to "repurpose" from the comics, similar to the way the show gave us a much more realistic (and less overt 'supervillain') in Leland Owlsley/The Owl. My take on him may or may not be heavily inspired by Saul Goodman.


	6. Chapter 6

It was a rare day at the offices of Nelson and Murdock when they were relieved not to have many clients. Matt, Foggy, and Karen were still trying to process the murder of Carl Hoffman on the steps of the courthouse the day before. The three of them were gathered around Karen’s desk in the center of the office.

“He can’t do this!” Matt had lost count of the number of times Karen had said this since he came in this morning.

“It was a clever move.” Matt hated to admit it, but it was true. “Now they’ve got Hoffman on record saying he made up everything on that tape.”

“And no Hoffman to question about it on the witness stand,” Foggy said.

“But they’ve got other witnesses to testify against Fisk, right? Right?”

_Poor Karen_ , Matt thought. As much as he despised Wilson Fisk, Karen had really had it the worst. Fisk tried to frame her for murder and then sent people to assault her multiple times. And of the three of them, she had been the closest to Ben Urich and Mrs. Cardenas.

“Landman and the Senator, at least,” Matt said, trying to sound optimistic. _If no one blows their heads off_.

“I guarantee Landman is giving the prosecution everything they need to know,” Foggy said. “That guy is terrified of the freaking subway.” After a few minutes of silence, Foggy asked, “Do you think Natchios had some connection to Fisk?”

“No,” Matt said. _Not all rich people are bastards, Foggy_. But he knew that wasn’t why Foggy was asking.

The press was having a field day speculating about the link between the two murders: the _modus operandi_ were identical and, according to ‘experts’ who had seemingly materialized overnight, both shootings had taken a considerable degree of accuracy and patience. Matt could just imagine all the news editors across Manhattan sitting behind their fancy desks with fingers crossed, hoping for a third victim so they could officially declare a serial killer was on the loose.

“They won’t be able to say it’s the same killer for sure until the police release the ballistics reports,” Matt said. “But I think it is.”

“But why?” Karen asked. “If Natchios had nothing to do with Fisk?”

“Professional hitman,” Matt explained. “Someone hires him to kill Natchios - for whatever reason - and a month later the police still have no leads. Fisk decides Hoffman is a liability and needs him gone, and hears about this guy getting away with murder on the news.”

Foggy promptly got up and closed the blinds.

“How, though?” Karen kept crossing and uncrossing her legs where she sat. Every time she did her heels made a desperate little tapping on the floor. “They record all your phone calls in jail, don’t they?”

“Well, yeah,” Foggy said, “but people get around that all the time. ‘Make sure to pick up the laundry’ is really code for ‘shoot this guy in the face,’ or something.”

“Oh my God,” Karen moaned. The thought of Fisk still wielding power from jail was absolutely terrifying. Daredevil could do nothing to stop him while he was inside.

But there was something more going on with Karen. Matt had known that since the day they put Fisk away. There was just _something_ in her voice, a slight hesitation like she was measuring her words before she spoke that wasn’t there when she talked about anything else. Even when he’d told her as much, she’d shrugged it off. Foggy had just berated him for being ‘creepy and invasive’ when he brought it up.

“It’s going to be alright, Karen,” Matt said to her. He still honored his promise to keep her safe. “Even if this whole thing goes sideways and Fisk gets out, we’ve still got your friend in the mask.”

“Maybe her friend in the mask should try to find some evidence that can’t get shot in the head before the trial,” Foggy said pointedly.

Matt rolled his eyes. He almost pulled down his sunglasses as he did it. _I get it Foggy. You don’t want me beating people up_. Matt wanted Fisk convicted, for this to go the right way, as much as any of them. Because if Fisk got out, Daredevil was going to have a tough choice to make. Fisk wasn’t the kind of man you could scare off with a beating and some threats. If he wasn’t sent to prison, there was only one way he was going away forever.

_I’ll worry about that when I have to_ , Matt thought as he wandered back into his office. He had received a call earlier from a number with a Manhattan area code that wasn’t in his contacts and let it go to voicemail. He put in his passcode now, and heard a voice that was popping up in his head a lot more than he was comfortable with lately.

Elektra. He hadn’t really expected to hear from her at all after he called her office. She had sounded strange on the phone, distant, dazed, and she sounded that way now. She was so much easier for him to read in person.

“Hi, Matt? I, um, saw you on TV at the, uh, courthouse thing yesterday, and I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.” She left her number.

Matt put Elektra into his phone's contacts and shut the door to his office and called her back. She didn’t answer until after the third ring.

“Hello?” She sounded groggy.

“Sorry, did I wake you up? I just got your message.” His stomach was telling him it was well past lunchtime. But she had never kept normal hours.

“It’s okay. I guess you’re alright, then.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We were inside when, uh, when it happened. So...you saw all this stuff on TV?”

“You’re easy to recognize,” she said.

Matt wasn’t talking about himself. He was talking about Hoffman. How much did she know about how he died? He couldn’t think of a way to tactfully ask. Instead, he said, “Are _you_ okay?”

“Yes,” she said a little too quickly. Then after a few moments she whispered, “No. Not really.” So, she knew about Hoffman.

“Do you… do you want me to come over? Or you can come over here?” _Real smooth, Murdock_. Sometimes she made him feel like a tongue-tied, twelve-year-old idiot.

“Aren’t you at work? Wait, _are_ you at work?” she asked. Then she mumbled to herself, “God, I don’t even know what day it is.” Matt caught himself smiling at this. There was his Elektra.

“It’s Thursday. And yeah, I’m at work, but, uh, business is not exactly booming today.” Everyone was too glued to the news about the shooting to go out and get in legal trouble.

“Oh. Well…” She paused for a minute. “Thanks for offering, but I think I’m just going to go back to sleep. I’m glad you’re okay, Matt.”

“Yeah, we’re all fine.” He sincerely hoped he was keeping the disappointment out of his voice.

“Talk to you later.”

When Matt hung up, he could hear Foggy consoling Karen in the next room. _And I’m supposed to be the one who’s good at talking to women_.

 

\----------

 

Elektra’s dreams were plagued by gunshots and blood on the sidewalk. No matter what she did, what she thought, she couldn’t chase the image of the man covered in blood on the courthouse steps from her mind. By the time she got out of bed it was already dark. It hadn’t been a pleasant rest, but it _was_ sleep.

She knew the police weren’t going to find the man who killed that cop yesterday. The man who killed her father. She knew it had to be the same shooter. She just didn’t know _why_. And she wasn’t going to get the answers fast enough by going through papers with a highlighter.

Elektra combed out her hair, threw on some jeans and a low-cut shirt and got out her phone. She briefly felt guilty about blowing off Matt for the afternoon, but she had work to do. He couldn’t come over because her place was a mess, and she couldn’t go over to his work because _she_ was a mess. And after she was done with all of this and did what she had to do, she doubted he’d ever want to speak to her again. _I’m sorry, Matt_ , she thought, then switched her phone’s keyboard over to Japanese and texted someone she really never wanted to see again.

There was a little ramen shop down on 10th Avenue. Not one of those fancy, pan-Asian places where you had to wait two hours for a table, but a real hole in the wall, the closest you could get to the real thing in the city. It was probably because they recycled the noodles and the broth. Elektra sat on one of the rickety stools at the counter and ordered a bowl for herself while she waited. She didn’t realize just how starving she was until she started eating, slurping up the long noodles and pork and spicy broth as fast as she could shovel it into her mouth. When she caught the chef giving her a surprised look, he immediately bowed his head and shuffled off to the back of the kitchen. If only all Japanese men could be so polite.

“Na-chan!” Koji’s little nickname for her made her cringe. But Elektra smiled and greeted him in Japanese. He was wearing a dove grey Armani suit and had his dark hair slicked back like a 50s greaser. He took a seat beside her and complained about how cramped the little restaurant was.

“Now you really sound like an American,” she told him. Koji gave her a slippery smile. His teeth were very white and very crooked.

_I’ve traded an evening with Matt Murdock for him_ , she thought. _I must really be desperate_. If Koji knew that desperation was the only thing that drew people to him, he didn’t seem to mind. Koji was half-Japanese and half-Chinese, which made him a bit of an outsider to both. He wasn’t Yakuza or Triad, but if there was an East Asian person doing something illegal in New York City, he probably knew about it. Elektra handed him an envelope with two-thousand American dollars inside.

“You are so nice to me, Na-chan,” he said as he thumbed through the bills. “It really is too bad about your father.”

“Yeah.” Elektra didn’t want to talk about that, and definitely not to _him_. She pulled a pen out of her purse and drew the strange, snake-like symbol from her father’s ledger on a napkin. “Do you know what this is?”

Koji said something that sounded Chinese.

Elektra shook her head. “What?”

“Su-tii-lu Sa-pen-to,” Koji said slowly.

“Steel serpent?” she asked in English.

“Yes,” Koji said, switching back to Japanese. “The best ---- in New York. Maybe even in the States.”

“I’m sorry. What is that?” Elektra didn’t know what that word meant in Japanese.

Koji tilted his head, thinking. “Drugs.” He pantomimed injecting something into his arm and then said the word again.

“Dope? Heroin?” Elektra said in English.

Koji nodded. “That’s it,” he said in Japanese.

Elektra stared down at the sinuous symbol on the napkin. _Heroin_? That couldn’t be right. But the numbers, the extreme secrecy, even in his private documents, all seemed to confirm it. The only thing that didn’t fit was her father’s involvement.

“Who sells it? Triads?”

“No, no,” Koji shook his head. He was looking down at her breasts. “It was some old woman. But she’s gone now, back to her own country.”

“What about her people? Any of them still around?”

“No. They’re either dead, or they went back with her. It was more like...like a religion than a company.” He made a motion with his hands that indicated he thought they were all crazy.

Elektra’s thoughts were racing. Did her father refuse to do any more of this old woman’s dirty work, forcing her to leave, and in retaliation she had him killed? If she was back in China or wherever it was that she was from, the old woman was basically out of reach. _Shit_ , Elektra thought. But as long as Koji was thumbing his hundred dollar bills and staring at her boobs, she might as well try to get more information out of him.

“What else can you tell me about her?”

Koji’s dark eyes narrowed. “ _Onibaba_ ,” he whispered.

Elektra had to conceal a frown. The _onibaba_ was a Japanese myth about a demon who took the form of an old women and ate human flesh. There were plenty of Western myths along those same lines, but the Japanese were altogether a more superstitious bunch, and she knew Koji wasn’t speaking entirely metaphorically, at least in his own mind.

“What about the ‘Steel Serpent?’ Is that still coming into the city?”

“No. The stuff coming in now is not nearly as good. But you know that already, don’t you Na-chan?” He winked at her.

Elektra stared at him “What?”

Koji laughed until he realized she wasn’t playing coy. Then he laughed even harder. “Your name is on the boat it comes in on, Na-chan. Maybe you should pay more attention to your employees.”

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered in English. _They’re still doing it_. She switched back to Japanese. “You might be right about that. It might be time for me to let some people go.”

 

\----------

 

Matt pulled up the number for Lawrence Cranston’s office and entered it into one of his burner phones. He had already checked with the courthouse and knew Cranston wasn’t on the docket today. A young-sounding man answered the call.

“Law offices of Lawrence Cranston. How may I help you?”

“I need to speak with Mr. Cranston.” Matt was careful to keep his voice low, quieter and deeper than he usually spoke.

“Mr. Cranston is unavailable right now,” the assistant said smoothly. “But I’d be happy to help you.”

“I need to speak with Mr. Cranston directly. It’s urgent.”

“If you can give me your name, sir, I’ll let Mr. Cranston know.”

“This is the devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “I think Mr. Cranston just got out of his meeting. Please hold.”

“Daredevil.” Matt was sure Cranston was smiling on the other end. “You’ve got thirty seconds to convince me that you are who you claim to be.”

Matt was prepared for this. Loathsome as he was, Cranston was still a lawyer. “The night I found Hoffman, a cop had a gun to his head. One of Fisk’s people. He was about to execute Hoffman when I showed up.” That wasn’t in Hoffman’s taped confession, nor had it been brought up in court since it didn’t jive with Cranston’s story that Hoffman had nothing to do with Fisk at all. But Matt was sure Cranston knew everything.

“Well, then,” Cranston said. “What can I do for you, Daredevil?”

“I know you’re working for Fisk. I have something he won’t want the prosecution to see.”

“And what is that?” Cranston sounded curious, but skeptical.

“A record of Carl Hoffman receiving a massive amount of money from one of Fisk’s accounts the night before Detective Blake died.”

“I have all of Hoffman’s financial records. There’s nothing like that in there.”

“Overseas account. One of Fisk’s people set it up for him. Hoffman never got the chance to touch it.”

“Alright. Let’s say this record really does exist. It’s circumstantial at best.”

Matt had to be careful with the legal jargon, not to reveal his knowledge of the law. The fictional record _was_ circumstantial, but with Hoffman dead, anything that could corroborate his original confession would be extremely valuable - if it really existed. “If it’s of no use to you, then I’ll hand it over to the police.”

“Now, wait just a minute. If you think I’m working with Fisk, why would you want to give me something that you think proves his guilt?”

“Because I’m starting to think I did the wrong thing handing Fisk over to the police. If he gets out, I  can fix that. And you get a chance not to end up like Detectives Blake and Hoffman.”

Cranston seemed to consider this for a while. “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t care about money. But when Fisk gets out, you’re going to make sure I have a clear path to him.”

Cranston chuckled. _Take the bait, you greedy bastard_. “You must know that this is all sounding a little too good to be true.”

“You’re just a means to an end, Cranston. And given what I do, it’s not a bad idea to have a defense attorney owing me a favor.”

Matt knew the idea of representing Daredevil was too alluring for a media whore like Cranston to pass up. “How are we doing this?”

“There’s an old parking garage on 54th. 1 a.m. tonight. Come alone.”

“Alone? With you? That sounds dangerous.”

“Do you really want someone to tell Fisk you had a meeting with _me_? You might just end up next on that hit list.”

Matt hung up before Cranston could ask him any more questions.

 

\----------

 

Matt was starting to wonder if Cranston was going to show. He was perched between two concrete pillars in the ceiling of the lowest floor of the garage, listening. A few cars were parked on this level, but not a soul was around. It was the perfect time to do what he needed to do to Cranston. If he ever showed.

Matt didn’t wear a watch beneath his suit, so he had no idea just how much time passed until a car entered the garage. Vibrations in the concrete. Six cylinder engine. One heartbeat. Fast. Nervous.

When the car entered the lowest level, Matt dropped to the ground in front of it, poised to dodge - just in case Cranston decided to run him over. The gears shifted over to park. The engine idled.

“Get out of the car,” Matt said. Cranston’s heart beat faster. He fiddled with something in the driver’s side console and opened the door. He had something in his hand. His ring rattled against it. _Gun_ , Matt thought. _No_ … it was too light, too hollow. When Cranston pulled the trigger it only made a quiet, clicking noise.

Matt spun to his right and two tiny metal objects clattered to the ground, crackling with electricity. _Taser_.

“Shit!” Cranston tossed the now-useless weapon. Matt charged him before he could get back in the car, grabbing him by the back of his expensive silk suit and slamming him chest first into the hood of his car. With the engine still running, it was painfully warm. _He was right not to trust me_ , Matt thought, _but wrong to think he could stop me with a taser_.

“Who killed Carl Hoffman?” Matt asked him.

“I don’t know.” That wasn’t a lie, but Matt put his hand on the right side of Cranston’s face, pressing the other side into the hot metal of the hood. Cranston winced, the muscles in his neck strained.

“I don’t know!”

“What _do_ you know about Hoffman’s death?”

“Nothing, I don’t-”

Matt slammed Cranston’s head into the hood. _That’s going to leave a dent_. He didn’t know exactly what kind of car it was, only that it wasn’t the same as Elektra’s. But he was sure it was every bit as expensive.

Cranston groaned. Faint scent of blood in the air. “I only knew when and where it was going to happen. That’s all, I swear! I had no idea it was going to be the same as Natchios.”

Matt froze. _Natchios_. “What do you know about that?”

“W-what? Natchios?”

Matt put one of his knees up on the wheel well to give himself more leverage and grabbed Cranston by the back of his slicked-back hair and bashed him face-first into the car, much harder than the first time.

“What does Fisk have to do with Natchios?” he hissed.

“Ugh,” Cranston moaned, spit out blood and a tooth. It made a different sound than a tooth should have against the concrete, heavier, like porcelain. So Foggy was right about his teeth being fake. “N-Natchios had records, the drug trafficking charges, he, he, he was the only one who could prove how much dope the, uh, the Chinese were moving.”

“How would Natchios know about that?”

“It was him, his ships, he smuggled it from China to New York.”

_No_ , Matt thought. _That’s impossible_. But Cranston’s heart told him it was true. Elektra’s dad worked for Fisk? Maybe he didn’t know anything about Fisk and dealt with the Chinese only. But that still meant that her father, the man who had always been so nice and welcoming to Matt years before, was a drug trafficker, responsible for every junkie with a needle in his arm, for every kid that went hungry because mom needed to get her fix.

All of this raised an even more terrible question: what did Elektra know about this? Is that why she had been in Asia for so long? _No_ , he instantly told himself. He felt guilty for even entertaining the thought. She would never have anything to do with something like that.

“Please,” Cranston whined. “Please stop. Please.”

Matt flipped Cranston onto his back and punched him in the face. “Who told you all of this?”

“Fisk, Fisk did.” Again, Cranston was not lying. Again, Matt hit him anyway. Fisk might be calling the shots from jail, but he had to have people on the outside to carry out the orders.

Cranston’s hand shot up and clawed at Matt’s face. He was trying to tear away the mask. Matt grabbed his wrist and twisted it until Cranston screamed.

“Who else is he working with?” Matt demanded. “Besides _you_.”

“I don’t know, I….” Matt raised his fist. “He’s got a shipment coming in Tuesday night. Pier, uh...Pier 94!”

“Fisk is _still_ selling heroin?”

“Not with the Chinese, but he is. That’s how he’s paying for all of this, for me. Please...please, stop.”

Matt let him go. “When I see him, I’ll let him know Lawrence Cranston sent me.”

“No, wait! Wait!” Cranston called after him as Matt jumped off the top of Cranston’s car and pulled himself up to a higher floor of the garage. He took the stairs up to the roof.

_Elektra_...If he had killed Fisk when he had the chance, her father would still be alive. It was too late to save Hugo Natchios. But it wasn’t too late to save _her_.


	7. Chapter 7

The thumping bass pounded from the floor to the soles of Elektra's feet and up into her chest, dwelling there like an alternative heartbeat. Real cigarettes weren’t allowed in the Midtown nightclub, so she sucked back on an electronic one. She hated these things. It tasted like candy. She preferred the flavor of smoke and ashes.

She and her friends had secured their usual booth in the VIP section, above the flashing lights and sweating bodies on the dance floor. Two of the girls were cutting lines on the table.

“Jesus,” Elektra said. “Can’t you do that in the bathroom?” The two girls just laughed and took turns snorting the white powder through a rolled up fifty dollar bill. One of them offered the tube to Elektra but she waved it off.

They could do cocaine in here, but she couldn’t even have a real cigarette. _God_ , she thought. _That is so L.A_. There was a reason she never moved to California.

The girls rubbed what was left on their gums and touched up their makeup and went down to the dance floor. Elektra sipped on her fourth dirty martini of the night, but she didn’t feel drunk. She didn’t feel anything. The people below her moved in time to the music, more like dry humping than dancing, and women idled by the bar trying to look thirsty and men idled by the girls looking like sharks. The smell of desperation hung in the air, mingling with the stink of sweat and alcohol.

Elektra looked down at the table. The girls had left the little baggie that held the cocaine behind. _Steel Serpent_. This was cocaine, not heroin, but it reminded her of what Koji had told her. _Daddy, just what were you doing_? Maybe she would get her answer when she tracked down whoever had taken over the drug smuggling operations for the company. There was a shipment coming in Tuesday night from China. It was supposed to be a bunch of junk going to low-end department stores, but this time, she was going to examine the cargo personally.

“Whew.” Elektra’s friend Lily sank down in the leather booth next to her and pushed her blonde hair out of her face. She motioned over a waiter and ordered a Long Island iced tea. Lily plucked the empty baggie off the table.

“Didn’t save any for me?” She pouted.

Elektra took a drag from the e-cig. “That's not mine.”

Lily sucked down her drink through a straw and filled Elektra’s ear with the latest gossip. It was always the same. Everyone was fucking someone they shouldn’t, mad at each other for some minor slight, manufactured drama to fill their lives with some semblance of purpose.

“Did you see that video that came out today?” Lily asked.

Elektra shook her head. She had been too busy going through company records to watch the latest viral cat video.

“It’s _crazy_. That weirdo from Hell’s Kitchen, like,  beat the _shit_ out of some lawyer.”

Elektra’s head shot up. “What?”

Lily was already onto the next thing. “Come dance with me.” She tugged on her hand.

Elektra shook her head. “No. Who was it in that video?” With her free hand, she felt around in her purse for her phone.

“Some guy. Who cares? Let’s _dance_ ,” Lily whined.

Elektra flipped her grip on her friend’s hand so that she had Lily by the wrist. Elektra squeezed hard enough to make her point.

“No.”

Lily jerked her hand away and gave Elektra an annoyed look. “Fine. Whatever.”

Elektra grabbed her phone and searched for what Lily had told her. All she could think while she waited for a local news web page to load was just how badly she was going to lose her mind if Matt was hurt. _There are plenty of lawyers in Hell’s Kitchen_ , she reminded herself. _Probably_.

It was far too loud in the club for her to hear anything in the video, but fortunately there was an article beneath it. She scanned the text while the video was loading, breathing a sigh of relief when she didn’t see Matt Murdock’s name listed anywhere. It wasn’t his friend Foggy Nelson, either. Some guy named Lawrence Cranston - where had she heard that name before? The article told her. He was the lawyer of the man who had been shot at the courthouse, shot just like her father.

She had heard about the ‘weirdo’ as well - referred to as Daredevil, the devil of Hell’s Kitchen, or the Masked Man by the press - beating up criminals and running around at night like a lunatic. He just sounded like someone who had watched _The Dark Knight_ a few too many times to her.

But this article said something different. He had assaulted this lawyer last night in a parking garage and the lawyer had captured the whole thing on his dashcam. According to Cranston, who had both a broken nose and fractured eye socket among his injuries, the Masked Man had taken credit for killing Hoffman at the courthouse the other day. And he had taken credit for killing her father.

Elektra nearly dropped the phone. She stared at the video, watched the man in the red mask slam the lawyer’s head repeatedly into the hood of his own car. He certainly _looked_ like a monster. But she didn’t know the first thing about this guy or what he had to do with her dad. With nowhere else to turn, she scrolled down to the comments section of the article:

_‘Larry Cranston is a LIAR. Daredevil would never shoot anyone! How convenient there is no audio from this recording!’_

_‘I’m starting to think Fisk is innocent all along and it was the masked man who shot the cops and set the bombs. If he’s not bad why does he run around in a mask at night?’_

_‘the illuminati and nwo killed the cop and that rich guy, devil is just their pawn’_

_‘Daredevil is the only one who cares about Hell’s Kitchen! Looks like Fisk still has friends in the media...’_

Elektra put her hand on her forehead. _Oh my God_. Every time she started to think she had a good plan, something came along and turned everything upside down. The comments of a bunch of anonymous morons on the internet weren't going to set it right for her. But there was at least one person whose opinion she could trust, and surely he must have one on the devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

It was nearly 2 a.m., technically not even Saturday night anymore, but Sunday morning. She wondered if Matt had a girl over at his place. Or if he was out with one. _Because I don’t already have enough things that are pissing me off_ , she thought.

She started to call him, but switched over to text. He didn’t particularly like text messaging - for obvious reasons - and she didn’t particularly like some robot voice reading her words out to him, but she wouldn’t be able to hear him over the club's music.

_Hi, Matt. Sorry it’s so late, and sorry to text, but it’s too loud in here to call you right now. I need to talk to you about something. If now isn't a good time, I can call you tomorrow._

Elektra stared down at her phone, secretly hoping he would get back to her right away. That he wasn’t having sex with some stupid bimbo at this very moment. She occupied herself by finishing the rest of her drink and ordering another. When her phone lit up, she smiled.

_Now is ok. What’s up?_

Elektra felt bad making him type all this out. But she really wanted to know if he was spending his Saturday nights alone.

_Would you mind if I stop by? Your place is on my way home._

That wasn’t strictly true, but it was close enough. She chugged down her drink when the waiter brought it and gave him one hundred and fifty dollars to cover her part of the bill.

_That’s fine. I’ll be here._

Elektra caught the eye of one of her friends and pantomimed that she was leaving, although she doubted any of them would send out a search party if she suddenly disappeared. When she got outside, the cold fall air and relative quiet seemed to relax her, but that might have been the five drinks finally taking effect. She shouldn’t be this happy that Matt had nothing better to do on a Saturday night. _You’re a selfish bitch_ , she told herself.

The bouncer went and called her a cab.

 

\----------

 

Elektra knocked on the front door to his apartment and then banged on it. When Matt let her in, she took five steps and careened into the wall.

“Are you drunk?” he asked her. He didn’t need enhanced senses to smell the gin on her breath.

“Yeah.” She bumped into him and laughed and then ran into the other wall, bouncing down the hallway like a pinball. “It all hit me on the car ride over.”

“Well, at least you didn’t drive.” He followed her into his living room, bracing himself for her assessment of his apartment.

All she did was laugh some more. “I don’t drink and drive, Matt. You know I’d never hurt my car.”

Matt snickered. “Well, this is my place. It’s not exactly the Upper East Side, but it’s home.” He hung back by the kitchen table and listened to her stomp around in her heels.

“It’s kind of warehouse-y.”

“It used to be an old factory,” he told her.

“Oh. Do you have any ghosts?”

Matt burst out laughing. “What?”

“I bet people died in here a hundred years ago from, like, shitty working conditions.”

“That’s going to be a comforting thought when I fall asleep tonight.” Matt was still laughing at her. _She’s nuts_. “You believe in ghosts?”

“Japan, man. They’re superstitious as hell.” It bothered him that she called him ‘ _man_ ,’ like they were fraternity buddies. “I don’t know. I kind of like it. Some part of you staying behind after you’re gone.”

Matt didn’t know what to say to that. At times like these, he wished he knew how to comfort people. The only thing he knew how to do was to punch the bad guys in the face.

“Oh.” Elektra walked over to the window and pressed her head against the glass. Matt was used to surprise when visitors first saw the electronic billboard outside of his apartment, but Elektra was wistful. “This is just like my place in Tokyo. The lights go all night. Except the apartment’s about the size of your kitchen.”

“Are you going back?” That came out of Matt’s mouth without his permission. He was scared of the answer.

“I don’t know.” She was still looking out the window. “I don’t think I can. Not until this is settled. After that?” She crossed the room and plopped down on his couch. “I have no idea. I have no idea about anything anymore.” She kicked her shoes off and they fell to the floor with a clunk. “I’m going to fall asleep on your couch, Matt Murdock.”

Matt walked over to where she was rapidly settling in. “I thought you wanted to talk about something?” Not that he minded her flopping around on his furniture.

“I do. I...did. I’m tired of thinking about things. Maybe tomorrow?”

Matt had a suspicion it had to do with the video all over the news today. _Daredevil killed Hugo Natchios_. He was desperate to set that right with her, even though she didn’t know Daredevil was him. It seemed Cranston had outsmarted him after all. Matt had spent all day berating himself for not noticing the camera in the dashboard, even if there was no way he could have short of going inside the vehicle. He knew a lot of people didn’t buy what Cranston said, but it still made him furious. Drunk Elektra Natchios showing up on his doorstep was the best thing that had happened to him all day.

“Why don’t you use my bed tonight?” Matt said. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“No, no. I want to sleep here. I’m like a vagrant.” He had no idea why she sounded proud of that.

“Do you want a change of clothes?”

“Nuh-uh,” she mumbled into one of the cushions.

“At least let me hang up your jacket.” Elektra took it off and handed it to him and then called him back when he started to go toward the coat rack.

“This too.” She handed him her bra. It was still warm from the heat of her breasts. _This is torture_ , Matt thought. _Actual torture_.

He hung up her things and brought her a blanket and a pillow.

“You’re so nice, Matt,” Elektra said. “I’m sorry to be such a pain in your ass.”

“You’re not a pain in my ass.” _Not in the way you mean, at least_.

He should go to bed, he knew. Go lay down in his bed and pretend not to feel the maelstrom of memories and emotions he was feeling. He sat down in a chair across from the couch.

“I’m glad you called me tonight,” he told her. Maybe if he were drunk too, it would be easier to say what he wanted to her.

“You’re so nice,” she said again. “Not like everyone else.” He wondered if she’d still think that if she knew it was him in the mask on that video.

Her heart rate was going down, her breathing growing deeper. When they were together, he used to lay in bed and listen to her sleeping and run his fingers over the contours of her face and the curls in her hair.

He didn’t touch her now, but he allowed himself to listen to her fall asleep. _You’re only making this worse for yourself_. He knew it. He couldn’t help himself.

 

\----------

 

Elektra’s back hurt. Her legs were cramped. And her head was throbbing. It took her several moments to realize she wasn’t in her own bed or even in her own apartment. She was on Matt Murdock’s couch.

She popped her head over the side of the couch and saw Matt getting something out of the refrigerator. He was wearing dress pants and a tie.

“Do you wear a suit every day now?” She asked.

“I just got back from church. I left you a note.”

Elektra rolled over and looked at the piece of paper placed next to her shoes. It looked like it had been written by a nine-year-old, and she supposed in a way it had. That was the last time Matt had been able to see his own handwriting. She thought it was adorable.

“There’s aspirin in the bathroom,” Matt told her. She lumbered over to it with her head pounding at every step.

The night before was a bit of a blur. She remembered going over to Matt’s place and falling asleep on the couch, but couldn’t remember what they talked about, if anything. She remembered the video, the wacko called Daredevil, but didn’t think they'd discussed it. She hoped they hadn’t discussed anything else.

She peed and washed her hands and face in the sink and rinsed her mouth out with mouthwash. If it was five years ago, she would have used his toothbrush too, but that was back when they were regularly sharing spit already. She made an effort to wash all the mascara that had run all over her face off with soap and a washcloth, but was only partly successful. Sometimes it was good that he couldn’t see her face.

In the cabinet behind the mirror (which she guessed must have been installed before he moved in) she found the aspirin along with extra strength motrin, tylenol, and about five other kinds of non-prescription painkillers. She wondered if there was something wrong with him or if he was just hoarding. Elektra took out four aspirin and stuck her mouth under the faucet to swallow them down.

She went back out to the living room and sat down at the table. Matt was cooking something. His apartment was sparsely furnished and impeccably neat, but she supposed that was by necessity as much as anything else. She used to worry about what would happen if they moved in together, since she had more of a ‘drop something wherever you want and someone will pick it up later’ approach to cleaning. He used to call her dorm room a minefield.

Matt set down a plate of scrambled eggs and toast and a cup of coffee in front of her and then brought his own breakfast over to the table.

“Wow,” she said. “Full service.”

“Best cure for a hangover is a greasy breakfast.”

Elektra looked down at her plate while she ate. She couldn’t look at him. This was already far too much like old times.

“I’m sorry to come over here drunk and pass out on your couch,” she said. “Not exactly the best houseguest.”

Matt chuckled. “I don’t mind. If you want that change of clothes, just let me know.”

Elektra was still wearing her red party dress from the night before. “I don’t know,” she said. “In a couple more hours this will be appropriate again.”

When she reached for her coffee she ventured a glance at him. There was a scratch along the side of his jaw that she must not have noticed in her drunkenness the night before.

“Oh my God, Matt. What happened to your face?” Without thinking, she grabbed his chin and tilted it towards her. When his cheeks reddened she jerked her hand away like it was a thousand degrees.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just cut myself shaving.”

“Well, I can’t make fun of you for that. I cut myself shaving last week.” She looked down at the scab on her ankle.

Matt grinned. Elektra looked back down at her coffee. She wished he wouldn’t smile at her like that.

After a while she said quietly, “Thank you. For being so nice to me. Even if I don’t deserve it.”

“Why wouldn’t you deserve it?”

Elektra looked up at him. “You know why I don’t deserve it.”

Matt frowned. “That’s ancient history.” Elektra tried to guess what he was thinking, but his expression was unreadable. Maybe it really was just history to him. Maybe she was being presumptuous in thinking that he still felt hurt by her, that hers was a wound that still stung. Maybe she really was just a college fling for him, a few good memories and nothing more. If that was true...that would hurt worst of all.

Elektra decided to change the subject before things got too awkward. “So, the thing I wanted to talk to you about...This Daredevil guy. Some guy is saying-”

Matt cut her off. “He didn’t kill your dad.”

“How can you be sure?” He certainly seemed sure about it.

“Because he doesn’t kill people. And the guy who’s saying that is a certified scumbag.”

“Oh.” Elektra pushed the crust of her toast around on her plate. “So...what exactly is his deal then? He kind of seems like a nutcase.”

Matt took a long sip from his coffee. “At this time last year, over half the cops in Hell’s Kitchen were working for Wilson Fisk. If Fisk was up to something, you couldn’t even trust the police to help you. The guy in the mask made sure he didn’t get away with it.”

Elektra had read as much about Wilson Fisk. “Then why did that guy in the video say that?”

“That guy in the video was Hoffman’s lawyer. Hoffman was working for Fisk.”

“Yeah, I know,” Elektra said.

“We sat in on Hoffman’s trial the day he was shot. His lawyer tried to make the man in the mask to be the villain in all of this.”

“But Hoffman’s dead now. He can’t still get convicted, can he?”

“Well,” Matt said slowly. “I suspect the lawyer’s on Fisk’s payroll. Along with a lot of other people.”

“Really?” Elektra asked. “Even though Fisk is in jail?”

Matt shrugged. “I’m sure he had plenty of money hidden where the feds couldn’t get to it. And schemes to make money that the FBI never found out about.” He felt across the table to her plate. “Are you done?”

“Oh, yeah. I can, um, wash it.”

Matt gave her a playful grin. “Can you?”

“I  mean, I can put it in the sink…” Elektra almost threw her fork at him when he started laughing. “Shut up.”


	8. Chapter 8

It had been two days since Elektra had been over at Matt’s apartment asking about Daredevil. He hoped he had managed to convince her that his alter-ego wasn’t involved in her father’s murder. She had seemed satisfied enough at the time, but the press was still talking about Cranston and his video. Even Cranston himself couldn’t realize just how deeply insulting that lie was. It had been bad enough back when Foggy thought the man in the mask was a terrorist; the thought of Elektra blaming him, even unknowingly, for her father’s death was too much for Matt to bear.

Their conversation had at least convinced Matt of her innocence in the company’s drug smuggling operations. She’d had no reaction when he brought up Fisk, his allies on the outside, his ways of making money. Elektra Natchios had never been particularly good at hiding her feelings from anyone, least of all him. He was pretty sure she knew that too, even though he had never spelled it out for her how he could hear her heart beating or feel the heat from her cheeks whenever he teased her.

Poised atop a building across from Pier 94, he had to remind himself that thinking about Elektra Natchios was a good way to get himself caught or killed. Even in his own brain, she was very distracting. He could only imagine the sort of lecture Stick would give him if he knew.

A large boat was coming up the river, but Matt had no way of knowing who it belonged to until it docked. Workers and heavy machinery idled below him, waiting too, and snatches of their conversations drifted up to where he stood. Mostly they complained about the late hour, but there was nothing about what they said that made him think they were involved in anything illegal - it was possible they truly didn’t know, just moved things from the boat to a truck to a warehouse.

A sudden clamor down there proved that the ship coming in was the one he wanted. Work boots pounding along the docks. Machines roaring to life. A heavy crane whined as it moved into position. With a running start, Matt took off, not toward Pier 94, but leapt to the roof of the building adjacent and then the next and the next until he was well away from the cacophony surrounding the incoming ship. Instead of his sticks, Matt had brought a grappling hook, which he secured to the roof ledge and rappelled down to the concrete below. He flicked the rope with his wrist and caught the hooked end before it hit the ground and secured it to his belt. The dock down at this end of the pier was empty, deserted.

Quickly, quietly, he made his way down the wide wooden planks, made rotten and rickety from decades of wet boots and heavy cargo. Matt put his feet over the side, but paused there. He had prepared himself for the biting cold of the Hudson in mid-October, but he had forgotten just how foul it was this close. Stink of garbage, gasoline, the rotting dead. Only beneath that were the proper river smells of seagrass and fish and silt.

 _Well_ , he thought. _It’s not getting any cleaner_. In fact, it was probably only getting filthier by the minute. Matt slipped into the water and tried very hard not to use his nose. The cold was indeed cruel, but he ignored it as he swam toward the ship in Pier 94. If he wanted to, if he concentrated very hard, he could tell exactly what was sitting down there on the riverbed from the way the sound traveled in the water and the way the currents traveled beneath him. If he wanted to. Matt would rather not know just how many lost souls he was disturbing with his little midnight swim. Damn Elektra and her ghost talk, making him think about this nonsense. Being Catholic made him twice as susceptible as anyone else to her ridiculous superstitions.

Matt swam around to the stern of the boat. No one was back here. They would be busy unloading from the bow of the ship for a while, working their way to the back. He swung the grappling hook overhead a few times to gather momentum and then tossed it up toward the deck. He pulled the rope taut, tested his weight, and, satisfied that it would hold, scaled the side of the hull and sneaked aboard.

 

\----------

 

Elektra drove as far as she could get onto Pier 94 before exiting her car. Under the floodlights, workmen in bright yellow vests stared at her with a mixture of confusion and alarm. She had considered dressing in a way that was appropriate for this sort of work environment, but ultimately decided to wear a suit, heels, and a trench coat. She needed to exude authority, not practicality, and her mother had always said people would believe almost anything as long as you looked the part. As she made her way towards the boat, she stuck her nose in the air and gripped the pistol in her coat pocket.

 _Are you really prepared to use that_? The nagging voice in her head was back. It was true that she’d never shot anyone, only people-shaped targets. She’d killed a deer once hunting and felt weird about it for a while afterwards. _This is no time to act soft_ , she reminded herself. Her father’s enemies - now _her_ enemies - had shown him no mercy. Why should she be any different?

A man who was supervising several men at a machinery panel came running toward her. “Miss, you need to leave this area immediately. This is an active unloading area and it’s very dangerous.”

Elektra fixed him with a cool stare. “I need to speak with the captain of the ship. Right now.”

The man tried to herd her back down the dock but she ignored him. “Like I said, you really should not be here right-”

Elektra cut him off. “ _I_ shouldn’t be here? That’s my name on the side of that boat. And on the top of your paycheck.”

The man gaped at her as recognition set in, but quickly recovered. “It’s very dangerous, Miss Natchios.” Elektra continued to move toward the ship and the man trotted after her. “Please. I can make sure the captain contacts you as soon as we’re finished.”

“Who am I going to sue if I get hurt? Myself? It’s fine. But _you_ probably should get back to work.”

“Um…” the man stood there wringing his hands for a moment before returning to his post, although she thought she heard him saying something about her over the radio.

No other workers tried to stop her as she made her way to the gangplank, but all of them stopped what they were doing to gawp as she passed. _No wonder it’s so dangerous_ , she thought. _You’re all standing around like a bunch of slack-jawed fools_.

An older man waddled down the gangplank when she approached. He was wearing a hard hat, but was otherwise dressed differently than those on the docks. “Uh, Miss Natchios, I’m Captain Jackson. If you need to speak with me, I’d be happy to come by your office…”

“No,” she said. “We’re going to talk right now. In _your_ office.” _I need to catch you red-handed_.

The man grumbled and eyed one of the big cargo bins as it slowly swung overhead, with only a crane and several metal chains keeping it from crushing them both to death.

“This isn’t negotiable, Captain.” No one was more impressed at how stern she sounded than Elektra herself.

“Shit,” the captain said under his breath, then gave her an apologetic look. “Uh, begging your pardon, Miss Natchios. This way, and quickly please.” _He knows why I’m here_ , she thought.

The captain ushered her through a maze of multicolored cargo containers, each one the size of a large storage shed, and toward the pilot house situated at the stern of the ship. She gripped her gun tightly as they entered, thumb ready to flick off the safety at the first sign of trouble.

They moved past several huge panels of lights and buttons into a tiny room with a desk the size of a children’s table and a single chair bolted to the floor. He motioned for her to sit but she shook her head.

“Are you going to shoot me, Miss Natchios?” Elektra couldn’t hide the shock from her face. The captain pointed toward her pocket. “If you don’t plan on using that thing, I’d appreciate it if you took your hand out of your pocket. It’s making me nervous.” He took off his hard hat and placed it on the desk, pulled an old handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his broad forehead.

Elektra recovered quickly and took her hand out of her pocket as a sign of goodwill. “Just answer all of my questions, Captain, and you won’t have to worry about what’s in my jacket.”

 

\----------

 

Matt managed to slip inside one of the cargo containers and made a small slit in the shrink wrap of the nearest palette. He could smell the heroin. It was nestled in between stacks and stacks of newly-made backpacks that still bore the scent of the assembly line. He estimated at least five pounds inside this single container, but he didn’t know if all of them contained heroin or just some of them. Either way, if he could smell it, the drug dogs at customs should have been able to. Someone must have paid their handlers to look the other way. It sounded like Wilson Fisk, alright.

Matt was debating checking another container when a terribly familiar voice caught his ear. It was muffled by layers of steel, but it unmistakably _her_. Elektra. On the boat. _What the hell is she doing here_? It took every ounce of self-control to keep himself from running into wherever she was and spiriting her away. Instead, he exited the container, locked the doors back into place, and crept toward the sound of her voice, pressing himself against the cold, smooth wall of the pilot house. She was inside, talking to a man.

“How much?” Elektra demanded.

“About half a ton,” a man said. He sounded tired. Her heart was beating much faster than his.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Who’s organizing all of this?”

The man sighed. “You know what’s going to happen to me if I tell you that.”

“I know what’s going to happen to you if you don’t.” Matt thought back to the gun she was carrying when he first ran into her. Her voice sounded menacing enough, but he could hear her heart thumping insistently, like it was begging him to intervene. _No_. _Not yet_. He forced himself to stay put.

“Eric Slaughter,” the man finally said, somewhat reluctantly. Matt didn’t know who that was, but Elektra definitely did.

“Slaughter? That old fart? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. And I can’t say I like who he’s partnering with either. Kids who think they know how to do all this because they’ve seen a few rap videos. My guys say that when they made the drop, those damn fools were just sitting out there on the porch, drinking and smoking pot, as brazen as you please. I’ll tell you what, it’s by the grace of God that they haven’t been caught yet.” _Let’s leave God out of this_ , Matt thought.

“Do these guys have names?”

“I’m sure they do, but I’ll be damned if I know what they are,” the man said. There was a pause and he added, “I swear I don’t, Miss Natchios.”

Elektra was asking all the right questions, but Matt needed to know _why_ she was here at all. He wondered if it had anything to do with the things she took from her father’s place in Long Island, that first night they had run into each other. She had definitely lied to him about whatever she had retrieved from that safe.

What he heard the man say next caused Matt to lose his train of thought entirely.

“This never happened back when we were working with the Chinese. They’re real professionals, the Chinese. And your father knew what he was doing too. I’ll be honest, Miss Natchios. I don’t even want to be involved in this at all anymore. The money’s just not worth the risk.”

If Matt had been anywhere near the edge of the deck, he definitely would have fallen overboard. _Working with the Chinese_. _Your father knew_. All the pieces suddenly clicked into place. Her father had smuggled heroin for Gao. And Fisk had him killed, probably because he knew too much, or maybe just because he was no longer needed when Gao left the country. _Fisk killed Hugo Natchios_. Fisk. It always came back to Fisk, hurting all the people Matt ever cared about.

He had been so distracted by the revelation that he didn’t realize Elektra and the man had stepped outside until the door banged shut behind them.

 

\----------

 

“Is it in all of these?” Elektra asked as the Captain escorted her towards the stern of the boat, his flashlight strafing rows upon rows of cargo containers. The men working on the dock hadn’t even cleared to midship yet, but he kept looking behind them nervously.

“No,” the captain said. “Just the blue ones. Whatever’s left in them go to Summerland’s.”

“Well, I don’t shop there,” Elektra said without really thinking. The captain snickered.

She was still reeling from what he had told her about Eric Slaughter. Slaughter was pushing seventy and many were wondering why he hadn’t retired. _Well, now we know_ , she thought. He had been with her father’s company from the start, and, according to some people - her father would neither confirm nor deny this - used to have quite a few connections to organized crime. It looked like that question had just been answered as well.

The captain stopped in front of a light blue container. “Are you sure you need to see it, Miss Natchios?”

“Open it,” Elektra demanded. She wanted proof, needed proof, so that when she went to confront Slaughter, there could be no doubt in her heart. So she could do what she needed to do.

The captain flicked open the locks and released all the cables holding the doors closed. He shone his flashlight on an eight foot wall of brightly colored things wrapped in shrink wrap.

“It’s in the center of these packages,” the captain explained. “It will pass a visual inspection. They’re, uh...they’re going to know if we open it.”

“Who? The people who sell this stuff?”

“ _The_ stuff,” the captain said quietly. “They’re not going to be happy about that.”

Elektra motioned for him to go ahead. The captain cut into the clear plastic, and the smell of fresh, new stuff filled the air. He yanked out the other cargo, making a stack of flattened children’s backpacks made from cheap synthetic material and screenprinted with images of cartoon heroes. With his arm inside the container all the way to the shoulder, he pulled out a block wrapped in black plastic. He peeled back the cover to reveal a brick of tan colored powder.

So there it was. Her proof that this was not all some bad dream, some horrible, elaborate joke. She would have preferred being proven wrong on this one.

The captain repeated his concern about his partners not being happy they opened the container as he began to put things back inside the stack.

“They’re not going to be happy about this being their last shipment either,” Elektra said.

“Miss Natchios?”

“You’re not doing this anymore,” she told him. “My father’s company is not a god damn drug courier service. I don’t know how that got started, but, I...I’m not going to let it go on.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m entirely sorry to hear that. But you’re going to piss off some scary people.”

“I don’t care.” Elektra stepped aside and took the flashlight from the captain, shining it on the rows of containers. “The rest of these are legitimate cargo?”

“That’s right.” There were orange containers, a few brown, but _a lot_ of blue. _It doesn’t matter_ , she told herself. _That’s dirty money_.

A flicker of movement caught her eye and she spun, shining the light in its direction. She caught a glimpse of a man dressed in dark red, dodging between the containers. That was no dock worker.

“Hey!” Elektra chased after him, her heels pounding on the steel deck. When she heard something overhead, she shone the light above and saw him leaping from one stack of containers to the next. He was wearing a mask.

“ _You_!” She shouted, trying to track him. Daredevil. _What in the fuck is he doing here_? “Stop!” Elektra ran all the way to the tail end of the boat and straight into the railing. Daredevil leapt from one of the containers and splashed into the Hudson below. She tried to find him with the flashlight in the nasty, murky water. But he was gone. Vanished, just like everyone said.

 _Matt vouched for him_ , she reminded herself. But if Daredevil had nothing to do with her father’s murder, then why in the hell was he here?


	9. Chapter 9

_She saw you, you idiot_. She’d almost caught him too. Elektra could run a lot faster in heels than Matt would have guessed. She was always full of surprises. He had no doubt she’d be able to recognize him if they ever got face to face, if Daredevil ever had to speak to her. _That was too close_.

“Matt!” He realized Karen was standing in the doorway to his office.

“Sorry, what?”

Karen made an exasperated noise. “You still with us, Murdock?”

“Yeah.” Matt gave her an embarrassed smile. “Just zoning out. Sorry.”

“Well, get it all out now. You’ve got a meeting with a client at two.”

“Another one?”

“Another one,” Karen said. “Seems like people are taking the Halloween spirit a little too seriously this year. But that’s good for us, right?”

Matt chuckled. “I guess so.”

Last week they had no clients. This week they now had four, including the one Karen had just mentioned. None of them were fully innocent, so far, but they weren’t hardened criminals either. Just people who had made bad choices at a time when the District Attorney was looking to make an example out of everyone who came across her desk.

“I finished scanning those documents for you,” she said.

“Thanks. Send me the file when you get the chance.”

“I did,” Karen said slowly. “About fifteen minutes ago.”

“Oh.” Matt cleared his throat and checked his email. “Right.”

Karen walked over to his desk. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Matt said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Fine. I’m not used to being this busy, I guess.”

Karen dropped her voice. “There was _another_ thing about Hoffman’s lawyer in the paper this morning.”.

Matt sighed. “I’m sure he’s loving every minute of that.”

“I just wish they’d move onto something new. No one is buying his crap about the man in the mask.”

That wasn’t entirely true. A few of the more sensationalist outlets had fallen for it, but most of the media was taking a conservative stance on Daredevil and the upcoming trial of Wilson Fisk these days. It was like all of New York was holding its collective breath and waiting to see how it would all play out.

“At least we know Fisk doesn’t own the papers anymore,” Matt said, trying to sound optimistic. That was difficult when it came to Wilson Fisk.

“I guess that’s true.” Karen didn’t sound that optimistic either. “I’m going to the deli for lunch.” Her voice was suddenly back to business. “Want me to pick up your usual?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Karen’s heels clicked across the office floor as she went to ask Foggy what he wanted for lunch. Matt silently berated himself. All these clients had suddenly appeared at the worst time. Foggy was doing the lion’s share of the work, while Matt sat at his desk going through all the things he had done while wearing the mask the past few weeks, and all the ways he screwed them up. He’d been sloppy, he knew. Too emotional. First Cranston catching him on video, and then Elektra just nearly plain catching him. But even as he told himself he needed to do more work _at_ work, his mind drifted to what he had learned that night on the pier.

Matt had tried to find out everything he could about Eric Slaughter. According to an internet search, Slaughter was the current chief operating officer of the Natchios company, and had worked for Elektra’s father since the 80s. But Google didn’t have much useful information for Matt about Slaughter’s proclivities or old haunts, places where Daredevil could pay him a visit. This would have been so much simpler if he could just ask Elektra what she knew.

He should have told her about the mask when he had the chance, but Foggy’s reaction had left him wary of telling anyone. Elektra had just come back into his life and he wasn’t ready to scare her away. It was too late now, anyway. She had asked him about Daredevil and he hadn’t been completely honest with her; the perfect opportunity to tell her had passed him by.

He did have one clue he could follow up on his own: the mention of Slaughter’s partners. Young, sloppy, and cavalier - that sounded like some Hell’s Kitchen locals Matt knew. Ox had been charged with two counts of murder and was currently in lockup; Matt had hoped that without their leader, the Enforcers would have fizzled out. But it sounded like someone new had taken charge. Whoever it was, Daredevil was going to pay a visit. Soon.

He had to get to Slaughter before Elektra did. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She was too emotional, too inexperienced in dealing with truly bad people. She was too impatient. Matt had a feeling she was already trying to track the man down and already getting herself into trouble.

Elektra wasn’t on Fisk’s radar yet, and Matt would do just about anything to keep it that way.

 

\----------

 

The first thing Elektra did when she got into work the next morning was take the elevator up to Eric Slaughter’s office. It was dark. The whole suite was dark.

She called down to the receptionist. “When is Eric Slaughter coming in today?”

“Just a moment, Miss Natchios.” Elektra heard the receptionist pecking at the keyboard. “Ah. He had to go out of town. Family emergency.”

 _Emergency_. That part was true. “You fucker,” Elektra said under her breath.

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing. Sorry. When is he coming back?”

“He didn’t say.”

“What about his assistant? Is he ‘out of town’ as well?”

“Hmm.” More typing at the keyboard. “No, Mr. Wallenquist should be in today.”

“Well, he’s not,” Elektra said. “But don’t bother making a note in his file. I’ll deal with it.”

She got off the phone and went over to her office, pulled up the addresses and personal phone numbers for Slaughter and his assistant and sent them down to the printer.

While she was waiting on the document to print, she dialed Slaughter’s cell phone. No answer. No option to leave a voicemail either. It just rang and rang. She tried his home phone next and was informed by a pre-recorded voice that the number was no longer in service.

“God dammit!” She looked up to see the intern from the copy room holding out her document with a shaking hand. “Not you.” She took the document from him. “Thanks.” The kid was out of her office before she could blink.

Slaughter had gone ghost on her but his assistant, Al Wallenquist, might still be around. He was bound to know everything his boss did about the whole heroin mess. And probably easier to scare too. Elektra started to dial his cell, but then stopped. He wasn’t going to cave to some threat over the phone, and a call might spook him, might cause him to vanish too. _No_ , she thought. She was probably only going to get one shot at this guy, so she needed to play it smart. Plan something. Planning was never her strongest suit.

She plugged Wallenquist’s address into the GPS on her phone and drove to his apartment building in the East Village and parked a block away. It said he lived in 3C. The third floor of the low-rise was identified easily enough, but she had no way of knowing which one was C from the outside.

Elektra popped the trunk of her car and sifted through all the junk she had accumulated. There was a pair of uncomfortable pumps, an umbrella, and two bouquets of dead flowers people had handed her at her father’s funeral. That gave her an idea. She drove to the nearest florist and picked up one of the arrangements on display and wrote down the first name that came to mind on the card. Matt.

 _Oh God_ , she thought. _Not now_. She was sure he would highly disapprove of her little surveillance/stalking mission.

Elektra drove back to the apartment building and walked into the lobby with the bouquet. She greeted the doorman with a warm smile.

“Hi,” she said, peeking from around the flowers. “Um, I really want to surprise my friend with these flowers. Would you mind letting me in without calling him? He lives on the third floor.” Again, she smiled at the man, faked a flustered little laugh.

“Oh, I can take those up for you, Miss.”

“No, no.” She giggled. “I wanted to, like...do a thing. Spell something out with them.” She put her hand over her mouth. “Oh my gosh, this sounds so ridiculous.”

“Someone special?” The doorman gave her a wink.

“Yes.” She bit her lip. “I mean, I don’t know if he…” Elektra started to turn back toward the front door. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the doorman said. “I sure would have liked it if a pretty girl left me flowers when I was your age.” He called the elevator for her, poked his head around the side, and pressed the button for the third floor. “I think he’s going to love it.”

Elektra tittered nervously until the doors closed. When the elevator stopped on the third floor, she stuck her head out and looked down the hallway. Empty. The lettering scheme in this building had the first three letters of the alphabet facing the back, and the next three facing front. She stopped outside of 3C. She couldn’t hear anything coming from the inside, but this was a nice building and the walls were probably fairly soundproof. She considered trying to look in the peephole, but thought better of it. Instead, she just noted that it was in the center of the row and would have windows at the back of the building.

On her way back to the elevator, she took the card off the arrangement and dropped the flowers in front of 3F. _Have fun trying to figure out who sent them_ , she thought. The doorman gave her a smile and a thumbs up on her way out.

Elektra circled the building and found a high fence, but it didn’t obscure her view of the third floor. Peering between the slats, she saw a small, well-manicured garden and spacious patio. She looked up. Counting the windows, it seemed each apartment had two sets of two windows and a tiny balcony. The blinds were pulled shut in 3C and it didn’t seem like any lights were on. _Damn_. But she reminded herself that it was only early afternoon, and a sunny day. Wallenquist could be out. He could just have all the lights off. It would be much easier to tell if he was home at night.

 _I’ll come back then_ , she thought. _And ready with a way in_.

 

\----------

 

As soon as his watch told him it was six o’clock, Matt got out his phone and called Elektra.

“Hi, Matt.” She sounded fine to him. Calm, controlled, casual. He knew her better than that.

“What are you up to tonight?” he asked. As far as he was concerned, this phone call would be productive, no matter what she said.

“Matt.” She giggled. _Please stop that_. Her musical laugh was about the last thing he needed when he was trying to stay focused. “It’s a school night.”

“‘A school night?’” The things she said. He couldn’t help but laugh.

“I’m busy tonight,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Busy studying? Or busy drinking?”

“Oh my God, Matt. I wasn’t even that drunk.”

“You...were pretty drunk,” he said.

“I’m busy with work stuff, okay?” _Bingo_. She always said ‘stuff’ when she was lying.

“Ah, well...some other time then,” Matt said. “Talk to you later.” _See you tonight_. Matt packed up his briefcase and closed up his office.

“Hey, buddy. You wanna order in and go over the Martinez files tonight?” Foggy asked as Matt was putting on his coat.

“First thing tomorrow,” Matt said. He was ashamed that it took him a few seconds to remember just what the Martinez case was. _Sorry, Foggy_. “I’ve gotta run.” Matt shut the door behind him before Foggy could ask any more questions.

When he arrived home, he took off his coat and threw some leftovers in the microwave. He sat down on the couch and scarfed down his dinner. The cushions still smelled like her. _Stop it_ , he told himself. _You can think about that later_. He needed to focus, be careful tailing her tonight. If she saw him again, she might start to believe that what Cranston said about her father’s murder was true.

He changed into the suit. The temperature outside had dropped by a few degrees. The sun had set. It was dark and time for the devil to prowl the streets.

He took the rooftops and back alleys to Chelsea, until he was sitting atop her building directly. While he waited, he told himself it wasn’t at all creepy or stalkerish that he knew where she lived. It was for her safety. That was all.

A couple of people came and went from her apartment building, but none of them were her. He could have picked her footsteps, her scent out of a crowd of hundreds. Matt was careful to crouch down and out of sight of anyone on the street while he waited.

As it happened, she decided to make things easy for him. The roar of her car’s engine bubbled up from below ground and echoed off buildings as she drove down the street. Anyone could have followed that. The engine murmured while the car idled at stoplights, and Elektra muttered impatient obscenities to herself. She ran at least two red lights and a stop sign as Matt tracked her across the rooftops.

She was leading him to the East Village. Like Chelsea, he had to be extra cautious here. The upper-middle class were not used to a devil lurking in their midst (at least not quite so explicitly) and would most likely call the police at the first sight of him. Matt was sure the cops had a few questions for Daredevil after Cranston had accused him of murder.

After they’d nearly horizontally traversed the island of Manhattan, Elektra pulled her car over and continued down the block on foot. Matt didn’t know exactly where she was taking him - it was a residential area, so Slaughter’s house, perhaps. Her footsteps were brisk, determined. He noted that she was actually wearing sensible shoes for once, which worried him. Just what was she planning here, that she felt she actually needed to wear flat boots?

Elektra turned a corner and walked around to the back of a five-story apartment building. Matt stopped, made sure the roof was clear, and then leapt onto it, observing her from above. She paused for a few moments and then burst into a sprint, jumped, grabbed the top of the fence encircling the building and vaulted over it.

 _Holy crap_ , he thought. He knew she was in good shape, agile and quick, but he had not expected that. Matt kept low on the roof and listened to her sneak around the patio below. With a quiet grunt, she pulled herself up onto a second story balcony, paused, then balanced on the railing and pulled herself up to a balcony on the third floor. Her heart was pounding, and it was from more than exertion.

She stood motionless on the balcony for a long time. Matt listened. There were many people inside the building; he could hear snatches of conversation and footsteps, sounds of televisions and at least one couple having sex. But he thought the apartment she was standing outside of was empty.

When Elektra determined this for herself, she started to fiddle with something small, metallic and clicking, rattling glass in its frame. _Is she breaking in_? There was a louder click and she quietly hummed a satisfied little tune to herself as she slid the balcony door open. She was full of surprises tonight.

When Elektra crept inside the apartment, Matt dropped to a balcony on the fourth floor directly above where she was, an apartment whose occupants had turned in early for the night. He crouched below the window, placed his ear against the cold brick and listened.

 

\----------

 

Elektra checked the soles of her shoes to make sure they were clean. She was wearing gloves, her hair pulled back in a bandana. Unless she decided to take a dump in Wallenquist’s toilet, she was confident that she wouldn’t leave any traces of herself behind.

It was dark in the single bedroom apartment, but she didn’t risk turning on any of the lights. There was enough coming in from the street lamps that she wasn’t going to run face first into anything, at least.

There was a stack of dirty dishes in the sink, but the kitchen was otherwise tidy. Plenty of food in the fridge, a lot of it perishable. A stack of _Forbes_ and _Time_ magazines sat on the coffee table in the living room. Elektra rolled her eyes. _Could you be any more boring_?

She tiptoed over to the bedroom and opened up the drawers in his dresser. They were all full of clothes. His closet was full too, of nice suits that couldn’t disguise the fact that Wallenquist was a sad, paunchy little man. Toothbrush and razor still in the bathroom. Under the bed there was a large, empty suitcase. He might be gone for the night, but it didn’t seem like he had planned for any sort of extended vacation. When she stood back up, she saw a large bottle of hand lotion and a box of tissues on the nightstand.

“Ew.” She wrinkled her nose. “Gross.” _Guess I don’t have to worry about a live-in girlfriend_.

When she walked back out to the living room, Elektra saw something she had missed in the low light during her first pass. Wallenquist’s laptop. She immediately crossed the room and opened it, waking it from sleep. Password protected. _Damn_.

But with what was probably on this computer, she might not even have to deal with the little worm at all. She closed the laptop, jerked the power cord out of the wall and wrapped it up. Peering back out the balcony door, Elektra saw that the patio below was still empty. She zipped the computer up inside her leather jacket and made her way back down to the ground and hurried down the street to her car.

She put the laptop on the passenger seat and noticed the card from earlier wedged in the seat cushion. _Matt_. Elektra tore up the card and shoved the little pieces of paper in an empty shopping bag in the floorboard.

 

\----------

 

The next morning, Elektra laid atop her bed on her stomach, drinking a cup of coffee and staring at the password screen of Wallenquist’s laptop. Al Wallenquist. Forty-something. Unfortunate looking. Content to spend his career in another man’s shadow. She really didn’t know much about him. It was unlikely she was ever going to guess his password.

She rolled over and grabbed her phone from the bedside table, sighing as she flicked to the K section of her address book. She would have preferred to text Koji, but her spoken Japanese was much better than her grasp of the written alphabets. At least she wouldn’t have to pretend not to notice he was staring at her boobs.

“Naa-chan.” That damn sing-song voice. It was cute on sixteen year old schoolgirls, but not full-grown men.

“Do you know anyone who is good with computers?” Elektra asked.

“I know many people. What sort of help do you need?”

“Cracking a password. Only...” She looked at the laptop. She couldn’t trust anyone else with this valuable find, least of all Koji and his shady friends. “I can’t give the computer to anyone. I need something on a flash drive, or something like that.”

“Hmm.” Koji’s voice again turned playful. “Did you take something that didn’t belong to you, Na-chan?”

“I-” Her voice faltered as she tried to come up with something to say in her defense. She hadn’t actually thought of it as stealing - after all, she wasn’t planning on using the computer for herself or pawning it off for money. She just needed information; Wallenquist could have it back after she was done for all she cared. “Do you know someone who can do that or not?”

“Yeah, I know someone…” He let that hang in the air.

“You’ll get your finder’s fee, don’t worry.”

“Okay, Na-chan. I know you are very generous. I know someone. But...hikkomori.” _Hikkomori_. A shut-in. That was just as well; she didn’t want to talk to the nerd in person anyway. “He’s really frightened by Western girls.”

Elektra snorted. “Just talk to him and let me know how long it’s going to take and how he wants to be paid.”

When she got off the phone, she crossed that one off her mental checklist. Elektra started to put the laptop aside and thought about what Koji had said. _Stolen_. It seemed unlikely for the cops to trace anything back to her, but she wrapped the computer and charger in a large sweater and stuffed it into the bottom of a Barneys bag in the back of her closet.

She replaced Wallenquist’s laptop with her own on the bed and went to get herself another cup of coffee. There was a Halloween party she had to put in an appearance to this evening, but she didn’t care enough to go out and get herself some kind of costume, not when there was real work to be done. _Now to the second order of business_ …

Elektra had spent the previous afternoon in between her trips to Wallenquist's apartment Googling Summerland’s in search of any sort of dirt she could find on the company. What she had found wasn’t any better or worse than any other cheap department store, but it was enough.

She pulled up her work email account and ignored several weeks’ worth of unread messages and started a new message to all the members of the board and company executives - Eric Slaughter included. She hummed to herself as she copy and pasted paragraphs from various news articles about Summerland’s: allegations of child labor, unfair wages, sub-par materials. If the Natchios company refused to associate with anyone who had been accused of such things, they wouldn’t be doing any business with most of the countries in East Asia, but she figured she could relax her sudden hard line stance after the contract with Summerland’s was terminated.

Elektra knew most of the people at the company thought she was spoiled, stupid and vain. Knowing how much this email was going to ruffle their feathers made her laugh aloud. She typed her name with a flourish and sent the message. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this productive before 2 p.m.

With that done, she pulled up her web browser and began a search for Daredevil, the devil of Hell’s Kitchen, the masked man of Manhattan, and any other term she had heard used to identify the man she had seen on the boat. It quickly became evident that she wasn’t the only person curious about his identity and motives. There was an entire web forum dedicated to just that. Threads of blurry images and grainy video footage, stories of supposed encounters, strategies for staking out Hell’s Kitchen in hopes of catching him in the act. Evidently Daredevil was New York City’s very own Bigfoot.

Still, there were a few small kernels of interest among all the absurdity. His fighting style appeared to be a hybrid of several forms of Japanese martial arts and Western boxing techniques. He had never been seen using a gun, not even for intimidation. He targeted high profile, career criminals like Wilson Fisk as well as no-name thugs prowling the streets. It seemed to align with Matt’s assessment of this guy’s character, but it didn’t answer why she had seen him that night at the docks. Unless…

A disconcerting thought occurred to her. If he knew about the heroin on the boat, then he definitely knew her name was on the side of it. Daredevil had probably seen the captain showing her the product, but might not have heard any of their conversation. Was Elektra Natchios synonymous with Wilson Fisk in his mind? A greedy, rich heiress peddling dope to the people of Hell’s Kitchen.

“Well,” she said to a blurry, dark photo of Daredevil someone had taken on their cell phone, “I guess it’s good that I’ve got a black belt in jiu-jitsu.”


	10. Chapter 10

The weekend of Halloween wasn't the best time for Daredevil to prowl the streets, not if he wanted to remain concealed and unseen. Places that should usually be deserted after midnight, or at least devoid of the sort of people Matt didn’t want to hurt, were crowded, bustling, full of shouts and laughter and the smell of beer. That the suit could be mistaken for just another costume seemed a little too unlikely to hope for. So he clung to the shadows as best he could, to the darkness and places people were unwilling to venture even on a holiday that consecrated the frightening and forbidden.

Such a circumspect route took him much longer than it should to reach the alley behind the Enforcer rowhouse on 45th. He stood against the fence and listened. The old woman was inside watching television once more, but it seemed like no one else was home. For a brief moment, he contemplated the possibility that the fools had actually taken his advice in the basement that night, left town and the gang and set upon a better path, but he was shaken from this daydream by footsteps to the north. Matt recognized the cheap aftershave and smell of marijuana smoke. Darnell.

“I told you to leave,” Matt said. He expected Darnell to turn and run back down the alley. He didn’t. Heart racing. Gun rattling in his hand. Small bullets. Big clip. He was exhaling deeply, rapidly through his mouth.

“I gotta do it, gotta do it,” he murmured to himself. “Gotta do it.”

A hail of bullets flooded the alley. Matt dropped to the ground and rolled away. Darnell took aim once more, the automatic weapon clattering like a typewriter as it fired. Matt ran and leapt, hitting the plank fence feet first and pushing off with his legs, launching himself at his assailant. He knocked Darnell to the ground, jerked the gun out of his hand, and tossed it down the alley.

“I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry!” Darnell moaned. “He made me do it. He said I had to! Only way I could get back in with the gang.”

“Who did?”

When Darnell opened his mouth, the only things that came out were a wet gurgle and a mouthful of blood. A single bullet from the machine gun pierced the top of his skull. Matt could feel the heat from the projectile traverse the length of the unfortunate man’s head from crown through sinuses and mouth, lodging in his throat.

There was another man standing in the alley holding Darnell’s weapon. Heart steady, slow. Hands still on the gun. He took off towards the street and Matt dashed after him.

As they turned the corner, the front door to the rowhouse swung open. _No, no, no_!

“Darnell, what did I tell you about setting off those fireworks while my shows are on? You better ooh-!”

The shooter grabbed the old woman. Pressed the gun to her throat. His heart was still beating calmly as the woman’s began to thump urgently.

“Let her go,” Matt said. He started towards the porch.

“That’s far enough there, Red.” The gunman spoke with a lazy Southern drawl. Matt thought he might be from Texas, but pretty much everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line sounded the same to him.

“Just who the hell are you?” The woman snapped. “When my nephew-” The man clapped his free hand over her mouth. Muffled protests continued on behind it.

Matt stopped. “Let her go.”

“Now, now. You and me, Red, we got some things that need discussing. I don’t take too kindly to others taking credit for my good work.”

 _Good work_? "What are you talking about?"

“They been talking about me a lot on the news lately.” The man sounded pleased, even proud. “You know how that goes, don’t you Red? Seeing your name in the headlines is something else, ain’t it?” He chuckled.

A chill went through Matt as he realized just who he was dealing with. “You killed Natchios. And Hoffman.” His fist clenched. _And now Darnell too_.

The man clicked his tongue, pushed the gun barrel deeper into the woman’s throat. She whimpered.

“What’d I just tell you about staying where you're at?”

“Fisk hired you,” Matt said. “Didn’t he?”

The gunman whistled. “He sure don’t like you, Red. He’s put quite a price on your head. Thing is, with what he paid me for them other two, I reckon I can live like a king for a good, long time. You know when I killed that policeman, they got the whole thing on camera? It’s all over the internet. People like to watch that stuff, you know. I reckon shooting your block off will make me _real_ famous, and there won’t be no more doubts as to who pulled the trigger on them other two. There’d be no sense in doing it in some ghetto neighborhood with this old bird as the only witness. And no sense in letting some shit-shooting amateur steal my kill.”

“Then why the hell are you telling me this?” Matt demanded.

“The first rule of any good hunter is to know your prey. Other than that? Well, I reckon it’s just the fun.”

The man shoved the frightened woman down the porch steps. As Matt moved to break her fall, the gunman jumped off the porch and took off down the street. Matt set the woman aside and ran after him.

“See what I mean, Red?" he shouted behind him. "It’s fun, ain’t it?” At the corner, they came upon a huge crowd of Halloween revelers, all of them drunk teenagers or young adults. Matt felt himself being pulled in a thousand directions, moving to protect each of them. The man still had the gun. He could mow these kids down in seconds. But none of them seemed to notice that. What they did notice was Daredevil.

“Holy shit.”

“Wait, is that that guy…?”

“Hey, it’s the masked dude!”

At least a dozen cell phones began to snap pictures, and twice as many hands started to reach for him, for the mask. Matt had to duck, shove them off, and his need to catch the sniper was now superseded by his desperation not to be exposed. By the time he managed to extricate himself from the grasping crowd, the other man was long gone.

When he got home, he called the anonymous NYPD tip line from his burner. “I know who killed Hugo Natchios and Carl Hoffman. White male, late thirties or early forties. Southern accent, possibly Texan. Ex-military. Hired by Wilson Fisk. I’ll call again if I find out more.” Matt hung up as the dispatcher started to ask him a question. He knew it probably wouldn’t amount to anything, but he promised Foggy to try to do things the legal way first.

 

\----------

 

Elektra left the Halloween party sometime after three in the morning. She decided to walk home, sober and knowing it wasn’t a good idea. The city was notorious for gang activity on Halloween and, like all young women on this particular holiday, was dressed in as little as she could get away with. Which, in her case, was very little indeed. Maybe she was looking for trouble.

Her high from earlier proactivity had dulled in the face of the guileless carousing of the people she called her friends. She told herself that they were fools, naive and stupid, willfully blind to the real world, but she knew what she was really feeling was jealousy. Their lives were only complicated by superficial problems of their own design. They needed only to stop and breathe to take control of their own happiness.

She smoked as she walked, passing a man and woman, bodies pressed together up against the painted brick of a convenience store, their public display of affection well past a place that was acceptable by anyone’s standards. She wondered if they were in love, if they’d been seeing each other for years, or if it was the result of two strangers and too much alcohol. Maybe they had silently cared about each other for a long time and finally got the courage to act on it on this night when you could be someone else, anyone you wanted.

Elektra didn’t want to be a princess or a witch or a pirate; she wanted to be herself five years ago. In a city so big, it was easy to feel alone, surrounded by people you were certain were having a better time than you were.

She stubbed out her cigarette and turned down her block, starting to feel the blisters from the straps on her shoes. There were several squad cars with their lights flashing parked in front of her building. She got her keys out of her bag and took the stairs up to her floor, not wanting to run into whatever domestic drama the police had likely been summoned for.

So she was surprised to find her apartment door wide open and a uniformed officer standing outside.

“I’m sorry miss, I can’t let you in. This is a crime scene.”

“Crime scene? This is my apartment!”

“Oh.” The cop’s eyebrows shot up. He looked down at a small notebook he pulled from his pocket. “Um, Miss Natchios?” He seemed to disapprove of her outfit. _It’s Halloween, you moron_.

“That’s me. What’s going on?”

“There’s been a break-in, Miss Natchios.” He stepped aside to let her in.

Elektra gasped. Her apartment looked like the footage they showed on the news after a tornado came through, only the walls and floors were still intact. Every drawer had been pulled out, every cushion overturned, everything she owned unceremoniously dumped on the floor. Another cop was taking photos of the wreckage.

“Do you live alone, Miss Natchios?”

“Huh?” She tore her eyes away from the mess. “Uh, yeah.”

The policeman pointed to a window in the living room that had been smashed, glass scattered all over the floor.

“A neighbor saw the window from the outside and called it in. Have you been out all evening?”

“Since eight, yeah.”

He was writing things down in the little notepad. It fit in the palm of his hand. “Any idea who might want to break in?”

 _Wallenquist_. Wallenquist’s laptop. She hoped any sudden panic that showed on her face appeared standard for a woman who had just found her place burglarized.

“No, I...I don’t know. What’d they take?”

“Well, we were hoping you could tell us that, Miss Natchios.” He pointed to her television and speaker system. “Looks like at least some things of value weren’t taken.”

“Okay, let me, um...let me check on my jewelry and stuff in the bedroom.” To her dismay, the cop followed.

Elektra immediately looked toward the closet, which had been gutted along with everything else. She sifted through the shoeboxes and clothes in desperate search of the bag with the computer.

“Do you think someone would have stolen your clothes?” the officer asked.

Elektra held up a Christian Louboutin pump. “Do you know how much these cost?”

Then she saw it. It had been dumped out of the bag, a plastic corner sticking out of the collar of a sweater, but it was there. The thief should have seen it. But if he wasn’t here to retrieve Wallenquist’s laptop, then he could have only been looking for one other thing: her father’s ledgers.

She already knew that meant nothing else would have been taken, but she went through her jewelry and electronics anyway. They were strewn all over the floor, but it was all there. Back in the living room, the other cop was dusting around the broken window for fingerprints.

Elektra sank down on her cushionless couch and watched him with a cool detachment, like she was sitting outside of herself, as he sprinkled and brushed white powder along the sill. She imagined other men forming the powder into little blocks and wrapping it in plastic baggies and pressing it into trembling, clammy hands.

“Miss Natchios?”

Elektra looked up. The other police officer was holding out a business card. “Huh?”

“I said I think we’re done here.” The tech was packing up his things. “Here’s my card. Give me a call if you can think of anyone who would do this, or if you hear anything. We’re going to have an officer posted on your building for the next twenty-four hours, just to be safe.”

Elektra nodded numbly, looking down at her life strewn all over the floor.

When the cops left, she walked over to the window. The powder spread around it was smooth and pristine like a dusting of sugar atop a cake. No prints, not even hers. The glass remaining in the window looked like the jagged maw of a great beast that had come to swallow her whole. The real monster was somewhere out there in the cold night air, and yet she was strangely unafraid.

She felt only listless and confused as she walked among her stuff like one might pick their way through a field of hot coals. She had hidden behind things for so long, creating a fiction for herself in diamonds and gold and designer labels, a story so compelling she had even begun to believe it herself. It was just like her mother. Her mother who had died when Elektra was still a girl, who in the end was not a person but a collection of objects, remembered for her beauty and style and for nothing at all on the inside.

Elektra went into her bedroom and pushed the clothes that had been thrown on her bed onto the floor. She kicked off her heels and tights, tore off her jewelry and fake lashes and let it all drop amidst the clutter she had used to define herself for so long. _If all of this went away, would I still be here?_ She wondered. _Without all of this, who would I even be?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BULLSEYE! I don't think he's necessarily Southern based on any of the comics, but I had this vision of him as a young Woody Harrelson (specifically in Natural Born Killers) that just would not quit.


	11. Chapter 11

Matt played Darnell’s death over and over in his mind, trying to figure out how he could have stopped it. The gunner had completely sneaked up on him, and Matt wondered just how long he had been watched.

 _It’s fun_. The man’s drawl bounced around in Matt’s head. A week ago, it would have been difficult for him to imagine someone worse than Wilson Fisk, but it seemed there might be such a person after all. A man who saw people as prey, who found it ‘fun’ to toy with them, who viewed his victims like a trophy cabinet.

Darnell wasn’t a particularly upstanding citizen, but he didn’t deserve to die. Matt assumed his body had been found and hoped the old woman had been able to give police more information about the shooter - if she was bright enough to connect the dots.

The only good part of this situation was that the sniper had chosen Daredevil as his next target, and so Matt only had to worry about protecting himself - which was kind of a large concern in this particular case. He was confident of his ability to hold his own in hand to hand combat, even to dodge typical firearms, but this was a man who could kill from thousands of feet away, using massive, high velocity rounds that were certain to pierce even the strongest parts of his suit.

 _Still_ , Matt thought, _he came to me_. Matt didn’t know the man’s name or anything about him, but he knew his voice, what he smelled like, the confident way his boots echoed off the pavement. He could pick the man out of a crowd now, the man who was working to get Fisk out of jail, who had murdered Elektra’s father. The man Matt wanted to destroy. He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t personal. He’d be lying if he said no part of him wanted to see the man dead instead of behind bars.

It was these thoughts that led him to church in the middle of the afternoon and to sharing coffee with his priest. Father Lantom was right; he made lattes as well as any barista. It was a shame that every time Matt found himself here, he was too preoccupied to appreciate it.

Far from being annoyed, the priest seemed to be expecting him. “It’s funny,” Father Lantom said. “We always get a lot more confessions right after Halloween. Not about the night itself, but things that went on before. Maybe dressing up like someone else makes people think more about themselves when the costumes come off.”

“What about the things they’ve done with the costume on?” Matt asked. “The things they should have done?”

“I think you’re going to have to be a little more specific.”

“I spared a terrible person’s life because I thought it wasn’t my place to play God. I tried to let the law take its course. But even from prison, he’s still in control. Manipulating the courts. Having people killed. He hurt...he hurt someone very important to me.”

“And you think that, if you had killed him when you had the chance, none of this would have happened?”

Matt nodded. “It wouldn’t.”

The priest took a sip of his drink. “It’s always easy to look down the roads we didn’t take and see how things could have been better. What nobody thinks about is how things could have been worse. All choices have consequences, Matthew. Unpredictable ones. Maybe none of those things would have happened if you took that man’s life. But maybe someone even worse would have taken his place”

Matt thought about the sniper from the night before, killing for fun, for sport. As an individual, he might just be worse than Fisk. But Fisk was an institution, not a lone madman with a gun.

“At what point is it more wrong to let someone live than to kill them?” Matt asked. “A person so poisonous he infects everything he touches.”

“‘The greater good.’ Don’t you think it’s a little presumptuous to think you know what’s best for everybody?”

Matt frowned. “I know that murdering people and corrupting the police force is not good for anyone.”

“And yet it’s still murder, even if it’s for ‘the greater good.’”

Matt sighed, shifted his weight on the rickety folding chair. The church may have received a fancy espresso machine, but the furniture outside of the sanctuary was old and shabby.

“I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” he said.

“Well, that’s going to happen no matter what you do,” Father Lantom said. “If not by this man, then by another. You can’t stop them all.”

“I can try,” Matt said. _The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing_. He couldn’t remember exactly where he’d read that, but it was true. It was his obligation to try.

Father Lantom’s cup clinked in its saucer. “How much of this is really about preventing this man from hurting anyone else, and how much of this is about revenge for what he’s done to you and the people you care about?” When Matt opened his mouth, the priest cut him off. “ _I_ don’t need to know the answer. That’s something you need to answer for yourself - honestly. ‘Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord.’ Paul’s letter to the Romans - the people who crucified his God. By rights, he should have wanted them all dead. But he tried to save their souls.”

Matt thanked Father Lantom for the coffee and promised to think about what he said. There was nothing he could do to Fisk anyway, so long as he remained behind bars. But like most visits to church, it only left him feeling more confused and conflicted than before. It was his very nature, he thought, that was locked in a constant struggle with the idea of a Christian man, a forgiving man, a merciful man. Anger, hate, retribution were all written on his bones, put there not by time and circumstance but the Devil himself.

He sat down on the bench in front of the church and tried to collect his thoughts, at least enough that he wouldn’t run face first into anything on the walk home. His phone rang, saying the call was from Foggy.

“Hello?”

“I’m guessing from the not-frantic sound of your voice you haven’t seen the police blotter today,” Foggy said.

“Why are you checking the police blotter? Don’t we have enough clients?” _More than enough clients_ , Matt thought.

“I’m starting to get used to the idea of something other than ramen for dinner. This isn’t about work though.” Foggy’s tone shifted into something a little less snarky, a little more sympathetic. “Your girl’s place got broken into last night. I, uh...thought maybe she would have called you.”

Matt sprung off the bench “ _What_?”

“Ah, there it is. Francticness? Frenzy?” Foggy said. “I don’t know the details, buddy. It didn’t say anyone was hurt-”

Matt was already hanging up on him and dialing Elektra’s phone.

“Are you alright?” he demanded as soon as he heard her pick up.

“What? Oh...I guess you heard about last night.” She sounded sober, awake, but strangely placid for the recent victim of a crime. “Yeah, I’m okay. I wasn’t home when whoever broke in.”

Matt sunk back down on the bench and felt his heart rate start to level off. He asked her a few more questions about the crime - what was taken, if anyone was caught - but her answers were all negative.

“You should stay with me until the cops get this sorted out,” Matt said.

“Maybe,” she said. _Well, that wasn’t a no_ , he thought. “I should probably clean this place up before I do anything else though.”

“Is it really bad?” Matt already knew the answer to that - if Elektra thought it was too messy, it must have been hurricane-level bad.

“It took me about five minutes to find my toothbrush this morning. And I’m still trying to find the toothpaste.”

“Do you...do you want some help?” Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine her going through her entire apartment, picking things up and putting them away.

“Surely you have something better to do on a Saturday afternoon.”

Matt made a self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t, actually.” It was this or get caught up on some case files, and she was about a thousand times more interesting than anything that was sitting on his desk at the office.

“Well, now I feel sorry for you, so you have to come over.” That wasn’t exactly his plan, but he would take it. She gave him her address and he pretended not to know exactly where that was and caught a cab to Chelsea.

 

\----------

 

Elektra waited for Matt outside her building, smoking that stupid e-cig. Much as she would have preferred a conventional cigarette, it was better to smell like fruit than ashes. She hadn’t realized just how much she needed to not be alone right now until he called. Or maybe it was just how much she wanted to see _him_.

She had spent the entire morning lying on her bed, an island among the chaos, unable to bring herself to be quite motivated enough to do anything about it. It wasn’t laziness - at least, not entirely. It was this idea that she was nothing more than the things strewn all over the floor, and the accounting of such things would prove just how little she was worth.

When Matt’s cab pulled up, she hurried down the sidewalk to meet him. It was the first time she saw him wearing jeans since she'd been back in town.

“You’re not wearing a suit,” she said.

Matt smirked. “You’re still wearing heels.” Elektra was wearing the Louboutins she had shown the officer the night before. She assumed Matt could hear what kind of shoes she was wearing, or feel it through the sidewalk, or...something. She stopped bothering to ask a long time ago.

“They were on top of the pile.” Matt took her arm and she lead him through the lobby of her building to the elevator, up to her front door. By the time her dad had bought this place for her, she and Matt had already broken up. It was hardly in any condition to give him a grand tour.

“So, like I said over the phone, it’s pretty bad in here.” They stood in the entryway and she shut the door behind them.

“It’s also freezing,” Matt said. “When is the window getting fixed?” She had explained to him about how the burglar broke in when he called.

“Oh, um...I guess I didn’t call anyone yet.”

Matt sort of laughed at this and got out his phone. “Let me call Foggy.”

Elektra raised her eyebrows. “Foggy?”

“He’s pretty handy. He should know a temporary fix to keep some of the heat in, at least.”

While Matt was on the phone with his legal partner, Elektra tried to clear some semblance of a path for him from the door to the broken window. She put the cushions back on the couch.

“Do you have trash bags and duct tape?” Matt asked, still on the phone.

“Uh...probably? Somewhere.”

As she went in search of those items she heard Matt say, “Yes, I have to ask that,” into the phone. “Scissors, too,” he shouted after her.

A box of Hefty brand garbage bags was on the floor of the kitchen, tossed out of a cabinet along with a host of cleaning products she’d never touched. Scissors were located among scattered cooking utensils that had also been rarely, if ever, used. She heard a noise from the living room and left the kitchen to see Matt righting her coffee table.

“Does this go here?” he asked her.

Elektra shrugged. “Close enough. What are the trash bags for?”

“Put them over the window. Tape them up.”

Elektra grabbed his elbow and helped him over to the window. “ _That’s_ his brilliant idea? I could have done that.”

Matt gave her a smug look. “You didn’t.”

Elektra stuck her tongue out at him. “Here.” She handed him the box of garbage bags and the scissors. “I’m still working on the tape. Be careful with the glass.” It crunched under her shoes as she went in search of duct tape. When she found it, Matt had cut up several bags and unfolded them so that they were large enough to cover the window.

“What’s this?” Matt ran his finger over the white powder on the window sill.

“They dusted for fingerprints.”

“Did they find anything?”

Elektra sighed. “No.”

Matt stacked the plastic sheets on top of one another and held them over the window frame while she taped them to the wall. He helped secure the areas at the top of the window that were too high for her to reach.

When they were done, she said, “I hope this works, because it looks ghetto.”

Matt snorted. “It should help a little with the heat, but it’s not going to keep anyone out.”

“I know.” Elektra also knew where he was going with that comment. And she knew what was inevitably going to happen if she stayed over at Matt’s place for more than one night. What she didn’t know was whether that was a good or a bad thing.

Working together, they cleaned the living room much faster than she would have thought, Matt teasing her as she awkwardly maneuvered the broom.

“If you don’t cut it out, I’m going to dump this on your head,” Elektra said, looking down at the shards of glass in the dustpan.

“You won’t,” he said, laughing. “Because then you’d have to sweep it up again.”

She made an exasperated noise as she dumped it in the garbage bag Matt held open for her. He was right. He was always fucking right.

After the living room was put in order, they moved on to her bedroom. He hung up her clothes that had been pulled out of the closet while she went through the contents of her dresser that had been dumped all over the floor. She had already secreted Wallenquist’s laptop in a drawer, not wanting to take any chances that Matt might stumble onto it and start asking questions the way he liked to do.

Her bras and underwear had been piled in front of the dresser. She wondered if the police had taken photos of _everything_ , and thought maybe she should have paid more attention to what they had done that night in her apartment. _Enjoy it, you perverts_ , she thought as she put away several pairs of black lace panties.

About halfway through the pile - and after realizing she had way, way more pairs of underwear than any one woman needed - her fingers brushed against something flat and hard. The back of a picture frame. It must have been knocked off the dresser before her things were torn out of the drawers. She turned the frame over in her hands and let out a shriek, tossing it to the floor.

“What? What is it?” Matt crossed her mess of a bedroom with alarming speed and felt around on the floor until he found the picture. “What is this a photo of? Your dad?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Matt ran his fingers over the glass, rubbed a red paste between his thumb and forefinger. She thought he would know what that was; he’d removed her lipstick off his face and collar enough times to recognize it by touch.

“What did they write on here?” His voice came out like a growl.

“A bullseye.” Elektra gulped lungfuls of air. She couldn’t breathe. She was drowning in her own bedroom.

Matt’s knuckles went white on the frame before he dropped it on the bed and grabbed her by the shoulder, pulling her close to his body. When she opened her mouth next, the only thing that came out was a sob. And then another, and another, until they wouldn’t stop coming.

“Shit,” she muttered, trying in vain to stop crying. _Not in front of him_. Matt only held her tighter.

Elektra clung to the front of his shirt and let herself go. He didn’t try to quiet her. He didn’t lie to her and tell her everything was going to be fine. He held her and let her cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? A double post?! Put together, this section and the previous one were far too long for one chapter, so I decided to break it up (plus I like how both of them end). I may do more double posts in the future, in an effort to at least get half of this story up before the new season airs.


	12. Chapter 12

Elektra didn’t try to argue with Matt about staying at his place, not after finding that picture in her room. She _did_ protest when Matt tried to carry all her things to her car, and again when he insisted on carrying them to his apartment. His father didn’t teach him a ton in the way of manners, but he knew that much. He put both of her suitcases down in his bedroom.

“So, just how long are you planning on staying?” Matt made a show of stretching his shoulders. There were probably more clothes in her two bags than he had in his entire closet.

Elektra flopped down on the bed. “Matt, you don’t know anything about being a girl.”

“Well, you’re certainly right about that.” He grabbed a pillow from his bed and a couple of blankets from the closet and somewhat reluctantly made his way to the couch. Sometimes he wished his father hadn’t taught him _anything_ about being a gentleman.

The next morning ('morning' meaning technically before noon) Elektra seemed to be in a better mood, as if the events from the night before were a distant memory or a bad dream. If only that were true.

“You didn’t go to church?” She asked when she came out of the bathroom. Matt didn’t think she was wearing much in the way of clothes and tried to distract himself from thinking more about that by turning on the TV.

“I went yesterday,” he said.

“Oh.” Elektra sat down next to him on the couch and curled up with one of the blankets he had slept under the night before. She had no problem making herself at home. “Gimme.”

“What?”

“The remote.” Matt handed it over and went to make them coffee. As he waited for the water to boil, he listened to her rapidly flip through the channels before she settled on the network he'd had on originally. He made her a cup of coffee the way she liked it - with an obscene amount of sugar and a splash of cream - and took it over to her, sat down beside her on the couch. Her nails clicked on the screen of her phone until she tossed it aside.

“Do you know what’s fucked up?” She asked him.

_A lot of things right now_ , he thought. Instead, he asked her what she was referring to.

“You’re the only person who contacted me about the break-in. I haven’t gotten any other calls, texts, nothing.”

“Most people have better things to do than check the police blotter on a Saturday,” Matt said, leaving out the part that it was actually Foggy who had done the checking. He also left out the part where he thought most of her so-called friends were selfish idiots who weren’t fit to lick her shoes. Sometimes he thought she surrounded herself with people like that on purpose, people it was impossible to get close to, people it was impossible to hurt or be hurt by. Except it seemed like they had hurt her anyway.

“I guess,” Elektra said. She didn’t sound convinced at all.

Matt made a clumsy attempt at changing the subject by offering to make her breakfast, and she went back to channel surfing while he turned on the stove and got the eggs out of the refrigerator. And he nearly dropped them when he heard a name coming from the TV.

“...highly anticipated trial of Wilson Fisk…”

“Turn that up,” Matt said.

“...new court date of December third...”

December third. The defense had bought Fisk another month, and bought Daredevil another month too. Another month to decide just what he was going to do if Wilson Fisk got out of prison. The reporter went over a summary of the charges against Fisk and cut to a clip of that speech he had given last year on the steps of City Hall like he was the new mayor of New York.

“Oh my God.” Elektra sounded like she was about to laugh. “ _That’s_ Wilson Fisk?”

“You’ve never seen him before?”

“Not on video. God, he’s so awkward...like a big, bald man-child.”

“That doesn’t make him any less dangerous.”

“I know,” she said. “I just thought the guy with half the city in his pocket would have a little charisma.”

“I think he had a guy for that," Matt said. "He came to the office once, actually.”

“Seriously?” Elektra got up from the couch and came over to the kitchen counter as Fisk’s stiff, halting way of public speaking spluttered on in the background.

Matt told her about Nelson and Murdock’s involvement in the tenancy case against Fisk’s construction company, how they had worked with Ben Urich to bring down Fisk themselves, and how at least two of the people they had gotten close to during their investigation had been murdered.

“Jesus Christ,” Elektra muttered. “So, Fisk’s man...did the cops get him to flip? Seems like he’d be a perfect witness.”

Matt gave her a bemused smile. “Look at you, Miss lawyer.”

“Heh.” Elektra gave a short laugh. “I’ve been watching too many _Law and Order_ reruns. It’s on at least one channel, like, any time of night.” She wasn’t sleeping well. Elektra had always been a night owl, but he could hear it in her voice.

“To answer your question: I wish. The guy’s dead - murdered. Just like everyone else in Fisk’s inner circle.”

“Wait...Fisk had them _all_ killed? Even before he was arrested?”

“No loose ends,” Matt said. He started to say something else when Elektra interrupted him.

“Oh! I think the eggs are starting to burn.”

“Shit.” Matt had gotten so wrapped up in the story and his hatred for Fisk that he hadn’t even noticed the dry, popping sound coming from the skillet. He yanked it off the burner with another curse.

“I don’t mind them a little crispy,” she said.

Matt cracked a smile but before he could respond, Elektra’s phone rang. “Maybe it’s one of your friends after all,” he said as she went to answer it. She made a noise halfway between excitement and disgust before taking the call.

“ _Moshi-moshi_ ,” she said. He realized she was speaking Japanese. Quickly and quite impressively, at least to his untrained ears. Since he couldn’t exactly eavesdrop, he did his best to salvage their breakfast.

“I’m going to have to go out in a bit,” Elektra said when she got off the phone, sitting down to a plate of ‘crispy’ eggs.

“You speak Japanese a hell of a lot better than you ever spoke Spanish,” Matt said.

“That’s because I hated Spanish. And the Japanese have better movies and fashion.”

Matt could only shrug at that. “Well, I’m not really doing anything this afternoon, so if you want some company-”

“You can’t come,” she said before he could finish his sentence. “Sorry.”

“Wow, that’s got to be some kind of record for how fast a woman’s shot me down.”

“No, it’s...it’s just the dude I’m meeting would get offended if I brought along another guy. Especially a white one.”

“So, it’s a date.”

He actually heard her gag. “Oh my God, no. Ew, just... _no_.”

Matt would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little happy to hear that. “So, he thinks it’s a date.”

“No, Matt…” She made an exasperated sigh. “It’s like...weird Japanese machismo, okay?”

Matt bit into his toast. “I have no idea what that means, but okay. Is this something for your job?”

“No. He’s just got something I need to fix my computer.”

Matt didn’t think she was outright lying, but he didn’t think she was giving him the whole truth either. Still, he let it go, let their conversation lapse into something less confrontational. There was no way he could follow her - as Daredevil or Matt Murdock - in the middle of an afternoon on a Sunday without being spotted; he just hoped the same could be said for the deranged sniper.

It wasn’t enough that the gunman murdered her father; he had to taunt her with it, leave his calling card where only _she_ would find it, buried underneath her underwear and the last place cops would poke their noses in the investigation. Matt wondered if the man was really crazy enough to break into her apartment just to do that, and the answer was 'probably.' But with the way her place had been up-ended and her father’s house trashed and torched, it seemed more likely that he was looking for something.

That was when it all clicked. Matt dropped his fork down onto his plate with a clatter.

“What?” Elektra said to him.

“Oh, uh, sorry. Nothing. I just realized something about one of our cases at work.”

“Psh. I thought men did their best thinking on the toilet.”

Matt got up and washed his plate and utensils, giving his hands something to do while he played it all over in his mind. The safe at her father’s house. The safety deposit box. Just what exactly had she found that night they first ran into each other? And just how far was Fisk willing to go to get it?

 

\----------

 

Elektra’s meeting with Koji was pleasantly brief; he handed her a thumb drive and she handed him enough money to buy a decent used car. She wondered just what a recluse would do with so much money at once - not buy an automobile, certainly. She also wondered just how much Koji was skimming off the top.

On the way back to Matt’s place, she bought herself some candy at a convenience store and walked the whole way instead of taking a cab. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend more time with him or that she wasn’t eager to get into Wallenquist’s laptop, but that she needed to organize her thoughts, to clear her head. Solitude and the brisk, fall air helped with that. Matt Murdock in a sleeveless t-shirt did not.

She was unsure what exactly to make of what she had found last night in her room. Was it a threat? A cruel joke? No matter what his intent, the message was a clear reminder of what her true mission was: to find and destroy her father’s killer. No matter how complicated things became - chasing down Wallenquist and heroin shipments and avoiding that masked weirdo - the ultimate goal was simple. Justice. Revenge.

Matt left the door to his apartment unlocked, but she still knocked briefly before letting herself in. He had several folders filled to bursting with papers stacked on the kitchen table and was reading from another set. Braille, of course - so Elektra couldn’t snoop even if she wanted to.

“You get what you needed?” he asked as she took off her coat.

“Yep.” Elektra got Wallenquist’s laptop out of her one of her bags and plugged the charger into an outlet near the couch. She flicked the flash drive between her fingers while she powered the computer down. Koji’s shut-in friend had left specific instructions that she now followed, plugging the thumb drive into the USB slot and then turning it back on. A bunch of text commands flashed across the monitor during the boot sequence, and then she was taken to a password reset screen where the old password had already been filled in. She thought for a moment before entering _bootlicker_ as the new password. That would be easy enough to remember whenever she thought of Wallenquist.

When the little tune played heralding the welcome screen on the operating system, she couldn’t help but giggle a little maniacally.

“You alright over there?,” Matt asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

The first thing she did was open the mail application, and as her luck would have it, Wallenquist had not bothered to change his email password after having his computer stolen. He had been reading and sending messages though. She opened an exchange between Wallenquist and Slaughter involving the message she had sent last week about stopping work with Summerland’s. In particular, the last message in the thread and the date and time it was sent caught her eye.

_Eric,_

_I got in touch with V. It will be taken care of._

_\- Al_

It was sent on Friday around six p.m., just a handful of hours before her place was broken into and ransacked. Was this ‘V’ the gunman? Was the break-in some elaborate scare tactic meant to frighten her into backing down? Elektra scoffed. _They’re going to have to try a little harder than that_.

She went through all the other messages involving Eric Slaughter, but most of them were brief, dry exchanges about legitimate business. The constant back and forth seemed to indicate that he was still out of town, but there wasn’t a single clue to his location.

Suddenly, a chime played, startling her so badly she nearly fell off the couch. A new message had just come in from the man himself.

_Re: Investments_

_Al,_

_Set the meeting for tonight. If you don’t get what is owed, contact V for punitive action. There are others we can bank with._

_Eric_

_> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>_

_Investments_

_Eric,_

_Our associates want to have a face-to-face meeting before paying the balance on their account. How should I proceed?_

_\- Al_

Elektra quickly marked the message as unread so that Wallenquist wouldn't know anyone had gotten into his email, and tabbed over to the Sent folder, hoping he would send a slightly more specific reply. She wasn’t quite sure who the email was referring to as their associates - the hooligans the captain had complained about that night on the docks, perhaps - but the mention of 'V' made her immediately suspicious, as did the fact that real investment brokers didn’t set meetings on a Sunday night.

With nothing to do but wait, she opened up his hard drive and browsed through his files, silently praying that he didn’t have some sort of XXX folder. A half hour of digging, and it seemed she was going to be spared that, but there didn’t seem to be anything relevant to his boss’s less than legal activities either. It was just an endless array of reports, proposals, numbers and dollars and charts and all the things that immediately put her to sleep during a board meeting. She brought up the email window once again and set the laptop aside to go forage in Matt’s fridge.

“There’s beer in there, if you want one,” he said. Elektra had developed a real taste for Japanese beer since working in Tokyo, but she supposed the German stuff would have to do. She got out two bottles, opened them, and handed one to Matt, who was still at the kitchen table reading with his fingers.

“I thought Sunday was the day of rest,” she said, sitting down across from him. If she glanced over at the couch, she could see the laptop screen from where she sat.

“Not when I’ve got to meet with two clients tomorrow and need to know all this stuff beforehand.”

“So business _is_ booming at Nelson and Murdock,” she said. “But, isn’t that kind of a bad thing?” They were defense attorneys, which meant the only way they could have lots of work was if there were lots of people being accused of crimes.

“Not for Nelson and Murdock,” Matt said with a grin.

Elektra glanced over at the laptop again. Nothing. Trying to nose through Wallenquist’s laptop would be a lot more difficult if Matt could see - a thought she immediately felt bad for even having. Taking advantage of his blindness, even in such a small way, made her feel despicable, especially after all he had done for her this weekend. She wanted to say that keeping him out of all of this was for his own good, but that wasn’t true; it was strictly for _her_ benefit only, so he didn’t think bad things about her or her father.

“Mr. Studious,” she said, trying to change her train of thought. “Mr. Responsible. My dad used to call you that.”

Matt’s hands stilled on the page. “He did?”

“I mean, not _literally_ that, but yeah. I think he was hoping your study habits would rub off on me.”

“I seem to recall you getting pretty good grades, even though you stayed up all night watching ninja movies.”

“Samurai movies,” Elektra corrected. “And sure, I got decent grades, but I took bullshit classes. Philosophy, film theory, music appreciation - anyone could ace those.”

“I don’t think I could have aced film theory,” he said wryly.

Elektra rolled her eyes. “That has nothing to do with studying.”

Matt’s smirk disappeared from his face. “Why do you always do this?”

“What?”

“Sell yourself short. Is it really so hard for you to believe you’re good at something?”

Elektra narrowed her eyes. “I’m good at plenty of things.”

“Like…?”

“Like driving. And I’ve got a wicked sense of style.”

Matt sighed. “Real things, Elektra.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you want me to say? That I _haven’t_ had everything handed to me my entire life?”

“Did your dad pay your professors to give you those A’s? Did he?”

“No,” she muttered. She wondered if this was what it was like to be on the witness stand, cross-examined by Matt Murdock. It was annoying.

“Then you didn’t have _that_ handed to you.” His voice softened. “You don’t have to feel guilty about having good things in your life.”

“Okay," Elektra said, just to end the argument. “Whatever.”

She went back to the couch and tapped on the keyboard to keep the laptop from going to sleep. Still nothing from Wallenquist. _God dammit_. Not particularly wanting to go back to talking with Matt, she opened up the list of programs to see if he had any video games, even though Wallenquist definitely struck her as the solitaire type.

There wasn’t anything to play, but she did see that he had a separate application for scheduling and managing appointments. She double clicked to open it. And there, sitting in the first week of November was an untitled appointment at one in the morning tonight, at 44th and 10th. Hell’s Kitchen. Wallenquist must have had all his programs synced up to his phone. _Thank God for the Cloud_.

Slaughter might be there tonight. Even if he didn’t show, she could still get a look at who his partners were and, after they were gone, could deal with Wallenquist directly.

She looked up when Matt sat down on the couch beside her. “Let me take you out for dinner,” he said, an apologetic look on his face.

Elektra’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean like a date?”

Matt grinned at her. He really was a pain in her ass. “You didn’t gag, so I’m going to take that as a good sign.”

She opened her mouth to protest against him paying and then shut it again. Money had always been a point of contention in their relationship; he insisted on paying for everything, out of some stupid sense of chivalry or something, despite the fact that she had almost infinitely more money than he did. The gulf between their net worth may have narrowed slightly since he opened his law practice, but it still made sense to her that the person with more money should do more of the spending.

But she didn’t want to get into a second argument with him in the span of five minutes. And she really did kind of want to go out to dinner with him, considering she was going to do something possibly stupid and definitely not Matt Murdock-approved later on tonight. She would just have to insist on somewhere cheap.

 

\----------

 

There were no more angry words exchanged during Matt’s dinner - or date, or whatever it was - with Elektra. She made him go to some greasy spoon, and he was sure that was because it was inexpensive and she didn’t want him spending his money on her, which was frustrating because it was the first time Matt could remember actually having a decent amount of spending money. But he let it go. And, as was so often the case at these mom-and-pop establishments, the food was quite good even if it would slowly kill you.

Matt wished he knew what was going on with the two of them. She was staying with him, they were going out for dinner, walking arm in arm down the street. With some dismay he realized that, aside from the part where he was straight, he could easily be her gay best friend. Being in the 'friendzone' was a new and highly unpleasant experience.

She was still hiding behind the wall she had put up the day she broke up with him, when she had offered no explanation, only apologies and assurances that it was for the best and that, oddly enough, genuinely sounded sincere. He knew he should probably hate her for that, but could never quite bring himself to it.

After all this time, that wall was still there, solid steel and impregnable. There was no going through it, no breaking it down; there was only coaxing her out from behind it. Elektra had always been a guarded person - he supposed a beautiful, rich young woman would have to be - but back in college, once she decided she could trust someone, she gave all of herself, freely and happily. That didn’t mean she always told the truth; she used to lie to him all the time about trivial things: yes, she had been up all night studying for the exam, and no, that was a flyer someone had left on her car and definitely not a parking ticket. It wasn’t about a lack of trust. It was about seeing how much she could get away with.

That she was unable to trust him now hurt him much more than he would care to admit. It wasn’t just about finding and punishing the man who had killed her father - although certainly having all the facts would make that task easier - but that he wanted to be the man she told all her secrets to. _You’re an idiot,_ Matt told himself as he got ready for bed. The voice in his head sounded just like Stick.

Elektra demanded that she sleep on the couch that night, since Matt had to work in the morning, and he could tell from her tone that pushing it would only result in another fight. Their evening had been too pleasant to spoil with a pointless argument.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep when a noise from the living room woke him. At first, he thought Elektra was just going to use the bathroom or to get something to drink, but then he heard her zipping up her jeans and lacing her boots. She walked on her toes to his front door, opened and shut it with barely a creak. He listened to the sound of her footsteps receding in the hallway for a few moments until the realization that she was sneaking out really dawned on him. _What is she up to now_?

Matt jumped out of bed and unlocked the little closet in his living room and threw on the suit. He exited via the roof and it didn’t take him long to catch up with her on the street below. Her strides were long, brisk and confident. And her gun was in her jacket pocket. One of the studs in the leather made a soft clicking sound against the metal handle whenever she swung her arms.

Instead of reassuring him, the presence of her weapon made him nervous. She wasn’t routinely carrying it on her person anymore, but felt the need to bring it to wherever she was going tonight. At least he thought they were alone. He couldn’t sense anyone lurking on any of the nearby rooftops, following her or him. Elektra lead him south and toward the docks.

That was when he began to hear the others - three of them, all standing together. When Elektra got closer she stopped, crept down a side alley, hopped atop a dumpster (Matt never could have imagined her this close to a dumpster voluntarily) and then up to a fire escape. She snuck up the stairs to the roof of the building opposite Matt, and he quickly dropped to his belly to avoid being seen. Elektra walked to the corner of the roof closest to the three men and sunk to her knees, and Matt army crawled across the top of his building toward them.

The smell of pot and cigar smoke drifted up from the three men below. One of them laughed, and the sound echoed off concrete on three sides and under foot. Behind them was some kind of large, segmented metal door. Smell of gasoline and motor oil. The men were standing outside a loading bay. A delivery? Matt just prayed Elektra stayed put.

“-can’t hardly get his fat ass out of that Indian joint down on the corner. You ever try that shit? They don’t even give you no forks,” one of the men said. He had a fidgety, anxious manner.

“This cracker is officially running late,” another one of them said. He had a deep voice, and a slow, ponderous heart beat.

“You gonna teach him a lesson, Fancy?” asked the first man. He seemed to grow excited at the prospect of violence. “Teach him the Enforcers are in charge now. _You_ in charge now.”

Enforcers. Matt should have known. _Elektra, please don’t do anything stupid_.

“Be quiet.” He recognized the third voice right away. It was the man from Darnell’s basement, the one who hadn’t fought him, who had given up Ox with no hesitation. He was in charge now?

Matt heard the car coming long before they did. It was big, expensive, and the driver stopped at every intersection for several seconds before moving on, like he was trying to talk himself into moving forward.

“Oh shit, here he comes. Here he comes, boss,” said the one Matt thought of as the Mouth. The calmer one was big and solid. The Muscle.

The car inched forward down the alley, passing directly beneath Matt and Elektra before it came to a stop and the engine shut off. The driver’s heart was fluttering wildly as he exited the vehicle. Matt was able to relax slightly when Elektra didn’t move from her perch.

“You late,” said the Mouth. “You know what happens when you make us wait? We get-” The leader shut him up with a click of his tongue, and the driver ignored him entirely.

“A-are you,” the driver stopped, swallowed hard. “Are you the new...boss?”

“Are you Eric Slaughter?” The leader countered. That was the name Elektra had reacted to down at the docks.

“He’s out of town. I-”

“I _said_ I wanted to speak with the man in charge,” the leader said. “Not his bitch.” The Mouth cackled at the insult.

“That...that can possibly be arranged. But your... _organization_ ,” the driver couldn’t hold back the disdain in his voice, “still owes us for the last shipment.”

“That shit was tampered with, yo,” said the Mouth.

“Were you still able to move the product?” Matt had to give the driver some credit. He was giving every indication he was terrified, but was still holding his own with men who wouldn’t think twice about shooting him in the head.

“We can’t have that no more,” said the Muscle.

“That’s an internal matter, and it’s been dealt with,” the driver said. Was that a lie? Or was it possible this was all connected to that psycho who broke into Elektra’s apartment? With the way the man’s heart was already racing, the way he was already sweating, it was difficult for Matt to discern if he was lying or telling the truth.

“We need that payment tonight.”

“I said I’d hand it over to the man in charge,” the gang leader said.

“If you’re not willing to pay tonight, I’m afraid that’s going to be the end of our partnership.”

“The hell it-”

The boss cut the Mouth off. “My man Ox is looking at two counts of murder. That’s a whole lot of time. I bet if he started telling stories about ya’ll though...I bet he could get a pretty nice deal.”

_Call his bluff_ , Matt thought. _Come on_. The new leader of the Enforcers was the last person who wanted Ox out of prison early.

The driver didn’t call him on it though. Instead, he fumbled for his words and the leader went on. “I ain’t Ox. This ain’t black folks working for white folks no more. It’s a _partnership_. You get me a meeting with your boss and ya’ll will get your money.”

The driver stood frozen for several seconds, but it was clear who had won this round. “Fine,” he said reluctantly. “We’ll be in touch.” As he got into his car and began to back out of the loading bay, the gang members shared a laugh and started walking the opposite direction on foot.

The car began back down the alley, going at no more than a creep through the narrow outlet, when Elektra hopped down two flights on the fire escape and dropped down onto the roof of the car. _No_ , Matt thought.

She rolled off the roof and landed on her feet next to the driver’s side window, gun in hand. _Shit_. Matt dropped down into the alley behind the car. It was stupid, but he had to stop her from doing something even stupider.

“Wallenquist,” she hissed. “Get out of the car.” Instead of complying, the driver - Wallenquist -  slammed on the accelerator, gouging the passenger side of his car against the corner brick as he sped out. As if in slow motion, Matt sensed the subtle shift in Elektra’s body as she prepared to shoot, the raising and tensing of her arm and flexing of her finger. Even if she didn’t hurt the man, if she shot his car the ballistics reports would come straight back to her.

Matt threw himself down the alley, knocking the gun away from her hand before it could go off. Elektra stumbled, slid on the gravel, but recovered quickly - and furiously.

“You asshole!” She shouted at him. Threw a punch he barely managed to avoid.

Elektra wasn’t as strong as he was, but she was at least as fast. And she knew what she was doing. These weren’t the clumsy blows of an amateur, but precise, controlled, instinctive.

Matt kept his hands up in a boxer stance, as much to protect his face as to conceal it. _Shit_. All he could think of was how he could get out of this alley.

“I’m not the one you want,” she said, striking at his right side. He spun away. _What is she talking about_? “He was! He works for the man who’s doing all this shit!” She aimed a rapid series of jabs at his face, which Matt backpedaled out of. She left herself open to an attack below the rib cage when she did that, but the last thing he wanted to do was strike back. He just wanted to get away. “I’m trying to stop him!” she yelled.

Matt hopped onto the dumpster she had used earlier and grabbed onto the railing of the fire escape. While he was prone, she kicked him so hard in his left side that he lost his grip and tumbled to the ground.

“I had him tonight!” She shouted as she scrambled after him. “I _had_ him!”

Matt used the momentum from his fall to propel himself forward and sprinted down the alley with Elektra hot on his heels. He launched himself at a street level awning and ran across the top, jumped up to a second story ledge, and zig-zagged his way to the roof. Elektra yelled at him from the street, but thankfully didn’t try to follow his precarious route. As he raced back to his apartment, he heard her walk back to the alley, probably in search of her gun.

When Matt made it back home, he was out of breath, sweating, and the place where she’d kicked him was throbbing. He stripped out of the suit and balled it up in his closet for now, then retreated to his bed, pulled the covers up over his rib cage where he was certain a bruise was already forming, and concentrated on slowing his breathing.

He had mostly recovered by the time Elektra came back in, and pretended to be asleep as he listened to her strip out of her street clothes and change into the little she slept in. She sat down on the couch, but didn’t lay down, didn’t try to go back to sleep. He thought she was trying to calm herself down.

He had only just allowed himself to relax when she abruptly got up and climbed into bed alongside him. Matt fervently tried to feign sleep even as his thoughts were racing. _This girl is going to kill me_ , he thought. He felt less bemused when he felt her heartbeat, her hands trembling as put them on his back. She was afraid. It wasn’t the awkward, fumbling fear of romantic rejection, but something more primal, fear for life and limb.

He pretended to be groggy, half-asleep as he rolled over and wrapped his arms around her. Still, she trembled. Was she afraid of the corrupt men inside her father’s company, the gangbangers they were partnered with, the killer who broke into her apartment? Or was she afraid of _him_?


	13. Chapter 13

When Matt’s alarm went off the next morning, he acted like he was pleasantly surprised to find Elektra curled up beside him.

“Your couch really isn’t that comfortable,” she offered as her excuse. There was no hint of anything that had occurred last night in her voice.

Matt reluctantly rolled out of bed (there was no way he could call out for the day, not with two meetings scheduled) and immediately put on an undershirt to conceal the bruise she had given him several hours earlier, which hurt like hell this morning.

He got ready for work was about to leave the bedroom when Elektra mumbled into the pillow. “Leave a spare key.”

_Does she ever quit_? “Where are you going today?” Matt said aloud, trying - and not entirely succeeding - to sound non-accusatory.

“I have to let the repairmen into my apartment.”

_Oh_. _Right_. Matt kind of felt like an asshole. “I’ll leave it on the kitchen counter.”

“Thanks,” she murmured, her voice muffled by sheets and the mattress. He didn’t think she had moved at all since he got out of bed. “See you later.”

Running on very little sleep, Matt spent his entire walk to the office annoyed. Annoyed with Foggy for insisting they take on so many cases. Annoyed with Elektra for keeping things from him and sneaking out in the middle of the night and kicking him in the guts. Annoyed with her for crawling into his bed and feeling so damn _right_ in his arms. And annoyed with the men she had hired to fix her broken window for being so efficient at their jobs. It could go another week, at least.

Matt’s demeanor must have been obvious on his face, because when he walked into work, Foggy called him ‘sunshine’ and Karen asked if he was alright. He made an obligatory and not-at-all funny quip about Mondays before slumping down at his desk.  

He let Foggy take the lead during their morning meetings, only interjecting a few questions or comments when he started to get a handle on what was actually going on with their client. Matt really had read through the case file yesterday; but between dinner with Elektra and chasing her around at night, the information didn’t get much of a chance to settle in. When his partner sent Karen to a sandwich shop with notoriously slow lunch service, he knew he was about to get chewed out. Rightfully.

“What the hell is going on with you?” Foggy demanded, leaning over Matt’s desk like an angry schoolteacher. “Halloween was Friday, and you’re _still_ acting like a zombie.”

“I know,” Matt said, rubbing his forehead. “I know, and I’m sorry.” Foggy seemed to relax a little at Matt’s contrite tone and pulled up a chair.

“Well, what is it? Elektra, the mask...Fisk?”

“All of the above.”

“All of the…” Foggy gasped. “Don’t tell me _she_ is working for Fisk-”

“No,” Matt said emphatically. “But I think you were right about her dad. At least, he had some connection to Fisk, which she has figured out and is now breaking into apartments and trying to assault people to get to the bottom of it. Not that she told me any of this,” Matt admitted. “I had to follow her.”

“Uh...look, Matt. I know this isn’t the best time to feel smug, but...well, I’m just going to say it. It really sucks when someone close to you is doing stuff that is dangerous and probably illegal and _lying to you about it_.”

Matt let out a deep sigh. He  _still_ felt guilty for lying to him. “You're right. It really sucks. And what’s even worse is she thinks ‘Daredevil’ is after her.”

“She thinks you shot her dad?”

“No. I don’t think so. But I tailed her last night in the mask, and when she saw me, she was scared, Foggy. Scared of _me_.”

“You tailed her last night? No wonder you look like shit,” Foggy said. “Did you at least find out anything?”

“As far as I can tell, someone at her dad’s company is using the ships to transport drugs from Asia to New York. Local gangs are distributing.”

“Oh, shit,” Foggy said. “And Fisk is the one pulling all the strings. That son of a bitch.” He pounded his fist on Matt’s desk.

“No one’s said anything, but that’s my guess,” Matt said. “They either seized or froze all his assets when he was arrested. He’s got to be making money somehow to pay that sniper to kill Natchios and Hoffman.” Matt decided not to tell Foggy about the sniper’s personal interest in Daredevil, rationalizing it by thinking an omission wasn’t the same as a lie. Not exactly, anyway.

“And he’ll have a nice little enterprise set up and waiting for him if he manages to beat the charges,” Foggy said. “That son of a bitch!”

Matt nodded. “Elektra’s trying to stop it.”

Foggy snorted. “One woman trying to bring down a criminal empire. I don’t know if you two are a match made in heaven or a match made in the nuthouse.”

“She’s not wearing a mask, Foggy. I don’t think she’s making much of an effort to conceal herself at all. I’ve tried to make her understand the type of people we’re dealing with, the lengths they’ll go to to protect their interests. It’s...frankly, it’s scaring the shit out of me.” Matt took off his sunglasses and scrubbed at his face.

“You know what you have to do,” Foggy said.

“I do?”

“Tell her about the mask. Tell her everything you have on Fisk. Show her where that ‘ninja’ sliced you up within an inch of your life. If I’m lucky, your two hard heads will knock some sense into each other. In the far more likely scenario, well...maybe having a partner will mean you’ll at least show up to work on more than three hours of sleep.”

Matt balked at the suggestion. “ _Tell her_? Because you took the news _so well_.”

“Okay, first of all, you didn’t _tell_ me. I found you half-dead in your living room. I think I would have taken the news a little better if you’d brought it up voluntarily.” Matt didn’t believe that for a minute. “And second, something tells me Elektra wouldn’t have as much of a problem with the whole ‘taking the law into your own hands’ thing. She’d probably find you hitting people a turn on.”

Since he already had his glasses off, Matt took the opportunity to roll his eyes. “Foggy…”

“Hey, everybody has their own thing, right? I like long walks on the beach and she likes to drive ninety miles per hour and break into people’s apartments.”

“I didn’t say she _liked_ it.” And the last time Foggy went to the beach, he complained about his sunburn for a week.

“Yeah, but let’s be honest here. She probably did.”

Matt sighed. “I can’t tell her. I can’t...I can’t risk her running off again.”

Foggy leaned back in his chair. “So you two are back together?”

“Not exactly,” Matt said.

Foggy ignored him. “I can’t say I’m surprised, but as your lawyer and best friend, it’s my moral obligation to remind you that this didn’t end well the first time.”

Matt couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his laugh. “Your concern is noted. While we’re on the topic of exes, what ever happened with you and Marci? This time.” He hadn’t heard Foggy bring her up in a while and lately he had resumed complaining about his sex life, or lack thereof.

“Are you trying to change the subject?”

“Is it working?"

“Let’s just say she’s tolerable in small doses. And she didn’t exactly take it well when I kind of accidentally told her that,” Foggy said sheepishly.

Matt snorted. “Real nice, Romeo.”

“Can we go back to talking about your problems now?”

They both heard someone fumbling outside the office door, but only Matt could hear Karen muttering under her breath and her bracelets jingling as she tried to turn the knob with her arms full.

Matt gestured toward the door and shot a pointed look in Foggy’s general direction. “I think Karen could use some help.”

While Foggy tried to be chivalrous, Matt put his glasses back on and rolled up his sleeves for lunch. All that running around last night and a mediocre breakfast meant he was starving, and he was feeling a little better after talking the situation out. A little.

“Did you guys hear anything about a murder in Hell’s Kitchen this weekend?” Karen asked as she distributed styrofoam containers.

“Not this weekend,” Foggy said around a mouthful of pastrami. Matt shook his head.

Instead of joining them at the table, Karen sat down at her desk. “I overheard some people talking about it on my way back from lunch. They said it was-” Matt heard her typing. “Oh, no. No, no, I was hoping they got the name wrong…”

The hitch in her voice made his stomach drop. “What is it?”

“Toby Edwards. That kid-”

“I remember him.” Matt dropped his sandwich, suddenly feeling sick. The kid they had saved from jail a little more than a month ago. The kid who had given him - and the police - Ox.

“Oh, Jesus,” Foggy muttered. “What happened?”

“It doesn’t really say,” Karen said. “Just that they found his, um...his body Sunday afternoon. And that it was a homicide.”

Matt only half-listened as Karen and Foggy discussed sending their condolences and flowers to Edwards’s mother. He knew right away who had killed the boy. The Enforcers. The gang the kid wasn’t even a part of. Just a few hours later those assholes were shooting the shit, laughing and smoking as they waited for the man from Elektra’s company. They killed him and they didn’t even care.

_I told him he would be safe_ , Matt thought. _I promised him_. He had really thought that with their former leader behind bars, Edwards would be safe. But it was obvious from the meeting last night that their new leader had his own plans and he demanded respect. He must have killed Edwards to send a message, to ensure future silence. Matt recalled Father Lantom’s words: _Someone even worse would have taken his place_.

_Jesus Christ_ , Matt thought. _What have I done_?

 

\----------

 

After letting the repairmen into her apartment, Elektra spent the afternoon sprawled on Matt’s couch, checking Wallenquist’s calendar (the only new appointment he had was for bodywork on his car) and skewing all of Matt’s Netflix recommendations by watching foreign movies and cartoons. It was past six now, closer to seven, and her stomach had gone from intermittent rumblings to extremely vocal protests.

She didn’t want to bother him at work, especially after he told her they were so busy, but she also didn’t want to be rude and get dinner without him. So Elektra decided to give Matt a call and see what time he was going to be back.

“Are you coming home any time soon?” she asked when he picked up. “Because I’m dying of starvation. Like, you are going to come home and find a skeleton on your couch.”

“Sorry. I should have called you.” He sounded distant. Distracted. Not at all like himself.

“Are you still at work?” she said.

“No.”

“Oh, um...are you busy?”

“Not really,” he said. “Just drinking at Josie’s.”

Elektra felt a primordial stab of jealousy pierce her gut. “Who is Josie?” she asked coolly. She thought she heard him chuckle on the other end of the line, but it wasn’t a cheerful sound.

“It’s a bar.”

“Oh,” she said. _Oh_. “You want some company?”

It took Matt several seconds to respond. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I think I do.”

“Okay.” Elektra was already sifting through the clothes in her suitcase while they were on the phone. Matt gave her directions to the bar and they hung up. She then did the thing she always used to do back in her dorm room in college: pulled out several different outfits, tried them on, took them off, put her hair up, took it down.

“He can’t even see you,” her roommate would say to her.

“Everyone else can,” Elektra would respond, flipping her hair. “I don’t want people telling him he’s going out with a slob.”

When she was satisfied with how she looked, she pulled up Josie’s Bar on her phone, having completely forgotten the directions Matt had given her minutes earlier, and made the brief walk over to the place.

It was a dive if she’d ever seen one, grimy and dark, and her shoes stuck to spots on the floor. The bartender looked like she’d fallen off the back of a Harley Davidson years ago and decided to set up shop. A couple of rough looking guys were playing pool in the back, and another was nursing a beer and watching sports on TV.

Matt sat at the counter by himself in his shirtsleeves, shoulders hunched over a bottle of whiskey he apparently had all to himself. His mouth was set in a grim line.

“Hi, Matt.” Elektra took off her coat and looked for somewhere to hang it up. There wasn’t anywhere. She set it on the stool next to her, thinking it was probably best to keep it close anyway.

“Hey,” Matt said as she sat down beside him. His hair was a mess. He looked depressed. Before she could say anything, the bartender sidled up, giving Elektra a skeptical look.

“Jesus,” the woman said to Matt. “How much does she cost for the night?”

“I’m not a prostitute,” Elektra said. Matt Murdock hardly needed to pay a woman to keep him company.

“Josie, this is Elektra,” Matt said.

Josie’s eyebrows shot up. “Elektra,” she mumbled the name to herself. “Not a prostitute. _Right_.”

Elektra rolled her eyes. “It’s Greek,” she said. “You know, like the Olympics and democracy.”

“Mm-hmm.” Josie didn’t sound convinced. “What do you want to drink?”

Elektra picked up the bottle Matt was working on, sniffed it, wrinkled her nose. _Not that_. “Do you have anything to eat?”

Josie slapped a grubby bowl of peanuts that was mostly empty shells down on the bar. “ _Oh-kay_ ,” Elektra said, pushing it away. “I guess I’ll just have a beer. Do you have Asahi?”

“A saw what?” the bartender said.

Elektra sighed. “Whatever’s on tap is fine.” She hoped the glass was at least clean. Elektra waited until Josie had brought her drink before asking Matt what was up with him.

“Did you lose in court today?”

Matt shook his head. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that. I’m just having a rough day.”

Elektra looked at him for a while, sipping her American and thoroughly flavorless beer. It wasn’t her first choice, or her tenth choice, but it still had to be better than whatever Matt was drinking. Based on how much was gone from the bottle, and the slight way he was slurring his words, she thought he might be drunk. Drunk Matt Murdock was a rare - and usually entertaining - sight. He got the giggles like a schoolgirl and stumbled over his words, but somehow always managed to stay on his feet and walk a straight line. But he wasn’t laughing tonight.

“Matt,” she said, breaking the long silence. “If you’re thinking something like I have enough problems and you don’t want to burden me with your own, I’d just like to say that it would be nice to help someone else for a change. I’m tired of feeling like a blubbering mess.”

“You’re not a mess.”

“Tell that to your shirt I covered in mascara and snot the other night,” she said. It reminded her that she ought to buy him a new one, or at least pick up his next dry cleaning bill.

Matt’s hand slid along the counter until he found the bottle and poured himself another drink. He swallowed down half of it before he spoke.

“Foggy and I represented this kid a while back. Good kid, just...just mixed up with some bad people. Gang members. I told him...I told him to tell the cops what he knew about the gang. That it was the right thing to do. I told him he didn’t have to be afraid.” Matt winced. “Someone from the gang killed him this weekend. He’d just turned eighteen.”

“Oh, Matt.” Elektra put her arm around his back and rested her chin on his shoulder. She couldn’t stand to see him like this. “It’s not your fault. It was his choice to tell the police.”

“I told him he would be safe. I promised him.” He laughed bitterly. “I don’t even know why I said that. How could I promise something like that?”

“Because bad things aren’t supposed to happen when people do the right thing. Everyone wants to think that.”

Matt turned his face toward her. “I’m not a kid, Elektra. I _know_ that’s not how it works.”

“But you still want to believe it does, in spite of everything. I’ve always admired that about you.” If his face was any closer, she could have kissed him. She ignored that thought, given that it was hardly the time. “You make me want to believe it too.”

“You don’t want to be like me,” Matt said. “Trust me.”

Elektra traced the stubble lining the corner of his jaw with a long red fingernail. “Self-doubt doesn’t suit you, Matt Murdock.” She took her hands off him before things got even more complicated and poured him another drink - although she probably shouldn’t have - and held up her own glass to signal the bartender for a refill.

“It’s a nice idea.” Elektra said. “Good and evil. Black and white. It’s easy when you can put things into boxes.” Elektra sighed. “Do you remember what it was like back when we were in college? Nothing was complicated. I mean, we _thought_ it was. We thought it was the whole world. But no one cares what grade I got on a Spanish test seven years ago.” She took a long sip on her drink. “God. I was stupid back then.”

“You weren’t stupid,” Mat said, frowning.

“No,” she said, looking at him. “I definitely did some things that were stupid.” She let that hang there for a while. “My point is...I don’t actually know what my point is. You’re a good person. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“A kid is dead, Elektra. He was eighteen. He won’t even get the chance to go to college.”

“Well…” Elektra put her elbow on the bar, ignoring the slightly tacky sensation between the formica and her skin. “You said he talked to the cops. What would have happened to him if he didn’t?”

Matt shrugged. “I don’t know. They might have been able to make an accessory charge stick, I guess.”

“So he would have gone to jail?”

“Probably.”

Elektra pursed her lips. “That’s not exactly a great outcome either, right? I mean, I don’t actually know anything about prison besides what I’ve seen on TV, but it cannot be okay for an eighteen year old.” Especially the pretty-boy types, but of course she didn’t bother asking Matt about that.

“It’s not as bad as being dead,” Matt said.

“Of course not. But obviously this kid got mixed up with the wrong crowd, and that’s on him. His choice. You can’t blame yourself for trying to help.” Elektra put her hand on Matt’s arm. “When my dad…” She took a deep breath. “When my dad died, I blamed everyone. The people he worked with, the security at his apartment, myself...shit, I even blamed my mom for dying and leaving him all alone. It didn’t help that the police didn’t arrest anybody.” Elektra pushed her hair out of her face. “It’s easier to be angry than it is to be sad, I guess. For people like us, anyway.”

“Elektra…” Matt had that lost look on his face again. She hated it.

“I’m just saying it’s okay to be sad, Matt. But the only person you can blame is the one who pulled the trigger.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight, felt him squeeze hers back. She stared down at their fingers intertwined, her diamond ring and long red nails, his callouses and faintly scarred knuckles. A loud gurgle from Elektra’s stomach ruined the moment.

“Shit,” Matt said. “You said you were hungry. Let’s go get you something to eat.” Matt settled up their tab and Elektra slid off the barstool, feeling a little wobbly. She’d only had two drinks, and only beer at that, but on such an empty stomach even such a small quantity of alcohol hit her hard.

He took her elbow and she leaned into his shoulder as they walked down the street. _This is how it should be_ , she thought. The two of them on the city streets together. The only thing that was missing was his smile.

Matt claimed he wasn’t hungry, but she made him order something when she stopped for food, which they took back and both devoured at Matt’s apartment.

“What did the repairmen say?” Matt asked as he washed their dishes.

“They have to special order the glass since it’s double-glazed or something,” she said. “But I’ll be out of your hair in a couple days.”

Matt sat down beside her on the couch. “You’re not in my hair.”

Elektra smiled. “Something is.” She reached up and tried to smooth down his errant locks, which were sticking up every which way but right. “Everything’s so fucked up right now. I hate it.” She brushed a few stray hairs across his forehead.

He had taken off his sunglasses when they got in, and the light from the sign outside swirled in and around his pupils to no purpose. The first time she had really seen his eyes, she had been surprised at how normal they looked. With the way he hid behind his sunglasses, she had been expecting scars or cataracts, something outwardly wrong.

She had since realized it wasn’t about being self-conscious exactly; he wore his glasses like a kind of armor or shield, a wall between himself and the outside world, in the same way she wore her makeup and designer pumps so people would look at her and see a stereotype, a one-dimensional image with paper cutter flaws and virtues, not the deeply confused and deeply confusing individual she really was.

“Matt…” In that moment, she realized just how badly she had missed him. Not just his physical presence, his companionship, but the young man she had fallen in love with in college, who took nothing but his studies seriously (too seriously), who didn’t have to worry about dead kids and crooked developers getting out of jail. _We can’t go back_ , she reminded herself. But he didn’t have to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders alone.

“You don’t have to do this by yourself,” she whispered, echoing what he had said to her when she needed to hear it most. Matt grabbed her arm and pulled her close until their bodies were touching. She felt her own heart thumping off his chest.

Elektra didn’t know which one of them initiated the kiss, only that suddenly their lips were touching, his hands were all over her, igniting her blood. Her clothes felt suffocating. Without separating, the two of them stumbled into Matt’s bedroom as a single entity, fumbling at buttons and zippers, leaving a trail of clothing in their wake. When getting undressed was taking too long, Matt, his boxers still around his ankles, shoved her dress up over her rib cage, the space of the years and the lies and the distance burning away as their bodies joined together.

“Matt,” Elektra whispered. “Matt.” His name was the only word she could remember.

They had sex again in the middle of the night, this time the proper way, naked and between the sheets. Elektra would doze for a few hours and when she would wake up she thought she was dreaming. But the feeling of Matt’s bare skin against hers was real, the warmth between them, the way they fit together like they were carved from the same piece of wood.

The pink light from the electronic sign bled in through the bedroom window, dancing over the sheets like they were in some cheap Tokyo love hotel. For the first time since her father was killed, Elektra felt something close to happy. It didn’t seem right to feel this way when his killer was still running around. _It’s not going to last anyway_ , she told herself. _Not when Matt finds out what kind of person you really are_. She might as well snatch a little bit of happiness while she could.

The next time she woke up, a computerized voice was announcing the time. Elektra groaned and threw an arm over Matt’s chest, wanting to keep him in bed just a little longer.

“Sorry,” he mumbled into her hair. “I would’ve checked my watch, but I’m not exactly sure where it is.”

Elektra giggled. She wasn’t exactly sure where anything she was wearing the night before had ended up either. “I’ll help you look. In a second.”

“I’ve got a few more minutes before the alarm goes off.”

“Oh?” Elektra smiled, walking her fingers toward his hips. She stopped abruptly when she felt something thick and bumpy marring the smooth planes of his stomach. Her lust giving way to alarm, she pushed the sheet back, revealing an angry, dark scar below his ribs, and a similar mark on his shoulder. There were smaller scars too, and a large, black bruise on his left side. She had been too distracted to notice the night before.

“Matt!” Elektra sat up. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Oh.” He fingered the bruise and laughed sheepishly. “I just bumped into something.”

Elektra was actually referring to his scars, but she couldn’t let such a bullshit explanation go. “I have never, ever seen you run into something.”

“Believe it or not, it happens sometimes when you can’t see where you’re going.” Matt tried to pull her back down alongside him, but she resisted.

“What about this? And this?” Elektra touched the two largest scars. “Did you run into something then?”

“Oh, that…” Elektra could have sworn she saw him flinch. “Car accident.”

Her eyes went wide. “A car accident? Who was driving? I’ll kill them.” Matt just laughed. “It was your partner, wasn’t it? I bet he drives like an old woman.”

Inexplicably, Matt was still chuckling. “No. No, it wasn’t Foggy. I’m fine, okay? No permanent damage.”

“‘No permanent damage,’” she muttered. _He is so full of shit_.

“Your concern for my well-being is adorable, by the way.” Matt grinned.

Elektra huffed. “You’re an asshole.”

He grabbed her shoulder again and she let him pull her down on top of his chest, but continued to frown. “This is why you should only get in a car with me,” she said.

“If you crash I won’t need to worry about getting hurt, since I’ll be dead.”

Elektra smacked him on the arm. “Dick.” She didn’t know why he found all of this so entertaining. “If you’re going to be so glib about it, you should at least make up something a little more exciting.”

“Okay.” Matt thought for a moment. “I fought a ninja who sliced me up with some kind of...chain sword, but I managed to win when he caught on fire.”

“ _Oh my God_. Forget it.”

“What?” Matt said, feigning innocence. “You said exciting.”

“I thought lawyers were supposed to be good at making stuff up.”

“I don’t need to make stuff up,” he said. “I represent good people.”

Elektra raised an eyebrow. “And you can tell that? Just by listening to them?”

Matt cocked a smile. “Yeah.” His alarm clock started chirping. When he turned it off, it announced the time as seven in the morning.

“Do you _have_ to go to work?” Elektra asked him.

“I do.” Although he was taking his sweet time actually getting out of bed.

“Oh, shit.” It suddenly occurred to Elektra that it was the first week of the month, which meant that she had to go to a board meeting. “What day is it?”

“...Tuesday,” Matt said slowly.

“Oh. Good. I have to go in on Thursday.”

Matt burst out laughing like someone was tickling him in his ribs. As annoyed as she was that he was having fun at her expense, it was worth it to see him in better spirits.

“Do you want me to send Karen over?” Matt asked as he made his way to the bathroom, picking up their discarded clothing along the way. “I think you need a secretary more than me.”

“Shut up.” Elektra pulled the sheets over her head. “Try not to run into anything in the shower.”


	14. Chapter 14

All eyes were on Elektra Natchios in the company’s imposing board room. Such attention at the office would normally make her uncomfortable, heightening her feeling of fraudulence when it came to the family business. But today her mission was clear, even if her grasp on the facts was a bit hazy.

“Miss Natchios,” the board vice president said. “Summerland’s is one of the company’s longest and most profitable contracts. To abruptly terminate-”

The woman was interrupted by the door opening with a soft click, and a short, owlish looking man wearing large glasses hurried into the room. Al Wallenquist. Elektra had to take a deep breath to keep herself from jumping across the glass table and throttling him.

“So sorry I’m late.” He had an unobtrusive, obsequious way about him, the sort of manner she was accustomed to seeing on Japanese salarymen. On an American, it just came across as insincere and fawning. _How’s your car_? Elektra thought as she glared at him. _How’s your laptop_?

The president of the board, a stern, professor type, fixed Wallenquist with a hawkish look. “Is Mr. Slaughter _still_ out of town? Still unable to even join us over the phone?”

“I’m afraid so. He sends his regrets.” Wallenquist folded his hands on the table.

“This is preposterous,” the president muttered. A few other board members echoed his sentiment under their breath. “I am sympathetic to...whatever sort of situation has befallen his family abroad, but two weeks without any contact - and at such a time - is simply unacceptable.”

 _He doesn’t want to be traced_ , Elektra thought. The president motioned for the meeting to continue and the attention shifted back to her.

The vice president cleared her throat. “As I was saying, to terminate the Summerland’s contract would require credible, irrefutable proof by reputable media outlets. The articles you sent,” she shuffled through several pieces of paper, “I don’t like the allegations any more than you, but this is little more than gossip.”

Wallenquist sneered, but quickly schooled his features when several board members gave him disapproving looks.

“Let’s be honest with ourselves,” Elektra said. “This isn’t Saks. This isn’t even Sears. Summerland’s sells cheap junk. The only way they can make the kind of profit they do is by sweatshopping all of this stuff.” She caught her own reflection in the glass, looking confident, smart. Like some other woman was wearing her skin.

“That may very well be true,” said another member of the board. “But to terminate a contract based on that argument alone...well, we’d have to terminate with half our our foreign partners.”

Elektra fixed the people at the table with a hard look. “Then maybe it’s time we become more selective with our clientele. Just because everyone is doing it doesn’t make it right.”

Most of the board members seemed to mull this over, but Wallenquist and the others who were paid directly by the Natchios company, the ones who stood to lose if the company’s profits were cut, were in a furor.

“That’s no way to do business!”

“Do you understand anything about this company’s finances?”

“Their business practices overseas have nothing to do with us.”

Elektra raised her voice to talk over them. “My father got his start down on the docks. He never forgot what that was like, to be the person working on the ground floor. When his competitors slashed their wages, when they let people go, he made sure everyone - including all of you - got paid what they deserved.” _More than what they deserve_ , she thought about many of the people in the room, herself included. “I don’t think he would like these things being said about Summerland’s, whether it’s by ‘reputable’ newspapers or not. We all know it’s true. I don’t think he would want his company to be known as the kind of business that turns a blind eye to others’ suffering so long as it cuts a profit. I mean, is that the kind of company _you_ want to work for?”

She half-expected an applause when she finished talking, or at the very least some kind of positive acknowledgement. Instead her audience regarded her with what at best what could be called thoughtful looks, and at worst was outright condescension. _Stupid girl, don’t you know how capitalism works_?

“We’ll postpone this discussion to next month’s meeting, I think,” the board president said. “Perhaps you’ll have more to show us then, Miss Natchios. And perhaps,” he turned toward Wallenquist, “Mr. Slaughter will finally return from his extended ‘vacation.’”

After the meeting, Elektra walked back to her office, unsure if she should feel foolish or proud of the things she said. The worst part was that she didn’t even know what her father would say, what he would want anymore. Two months ago, she would have unequivocally claimed, and with no shred of doubt, that he would have backed her entirely; he would have been outraged at the thought of doing business with any company that treated its workers like machinery. But now? She really had no idea. She doubted he would like her using the plight of foreign workers to justify her real goal of stopping the ships from smuggling heroin into the country, but then, she was doing it for the good of the company. For the good of the city that had raised him from lowly immigrant to corporate scion.

Elektra sat down at her desk and woke the computer from sleep. She had no actual work to do, but didn’t want to go back to her apartment either. After staying for nearly a week with Matt (and inevitably sleeping with him), her place felt big and sterile and lonely. Even with yesterday’s clothes on the floor and yesterday’s dishes in the sink, it still felt more like a hotel than home. Maybe it was because she wasn’t reminded of Matt Murdock everywhere she turned.

She looked up to a punctilious knock at her office door, and a small man slid in behind it. Wallenquist. He was like a worm in an Armani suit.

“You are quite the philanthropist,” Wallenquist said with a sneer. “I had no idea you were so concerned about the third world.”

Elektra curled her lip. “I’m more concerned about what’s going on in New York.”

“You need to forget about it.”

“Oh? Do I?” She rose from her chair. “Who’s going to make me forget about it? _You_?” She laughed.

“I know people who are good at that sort of thing,” Wallenquist said.

Elektra jumped over her desk and slammed Wallenquist against the door, pressing her forearm into his neck just hard enough to make it difficult for him to breathe, but not hard enough to make him pass out.

“You _know_ people?” she hissed. In her heels, she was taller than he was, and glared down at him like the vermin he was. “The same people who killed my father? So you and Eric Slaughter could have the drug business all to yourselves?”

“N-no.” He gagged, his face darkening. She didn’t let up. “We didn’t...that was before…”

“Before what?”

“We didn’t run...run the shipments…” Wallenquist clawed at her arm. “Before your father...f-father was killed.”

Elektra stared at him. “Bullshit.” He had every reason to lie to her about this.

“No, it’s...it’s true...s-swear it.”

“‘Swear it?’” Elektra snorted. “What do you have that’s worth swearing on? Your Rolex?” She reduced the pressure slightly on his neck, and the pooled blood rapidly drained from his face. “Who killed my father?”

“I don’t know his name.” His voice heightened in pitch when he felt her start to press on his trachea again. “I don’t! I don’t know anything about him!” _V_. Elektra stopped herself from asking about that; she didn’t want him to know she had his laptop, although he might have suspected her.

“Who paid him, then? Slaughter? Wilson Fisk?” Wallenquist’s eyes, already magnified by the thick lenses in his wire-rimmed glasses, went wide at the mention of Fisk’s name.

“I...I can’t…”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Elektra said. “Your ugly face gave it away. But this stops now.”

“W-what?”

“If you want to run drugs for Fisk, do it on somebody else’s ships. You’re not using the company for this shit anymore.”

“But your father-”

Elektra crushed down on his windpipe until he choked, turning dark purple again. “Don’t fucking talk about him! Don’t ever talk about him! Do you understand?”

Wallenquist gave a small nod and she eased off before he lost consciousness. “I can’t…” he said in between gasps. “That’s Eric’s call, not mine, I’m just-”

“ _Just his assistant_ ,” she said, mocking him. “You can speak for him in a board meeting, but all of a sudden can’t make any decisions? Funny how that worka out. Listen to me, you little piece of shit. This is going to stop. _Now_. You’re going to do it, or you’re going to tell Slaughter to do it. And if you don’t-”

“What are you going to do? Tell the police?” He scoffed, suddenly emboldened. “You’re not going to tell anybody. You do know what would happen to this company, right? Well, maybe you don’t...” Wallenquist’s eyes kept darting about, like he had just enough courage to look her in the eye for a single second.

“What are you babbling about?”

Wallenquist made an exasperated sound. “If you tell the police, the company will fold. All your money, all of this,” he looked around the office, “gone. And without this company, you’re _nothing_.”

“Fuck you.” Elektra rammed her elbow into Wallenquist’s face. His glasses flew off and blood began to spurt from his nose.

“Wh-what?” Wallenquist clutched his bloody nose and dropped to his knees to collect his glasses.

“I’m not going to tell the cops, you pathetic son of a bitch.” She grabbed him by the jacket and hauled him to his feet, feeling some slight satisfaction when he flinched at her touch. “I’m going to take care of you - and your boss - myself.”

Even as his blood seeped through his fingers, Wallenquist gave her a skeptical look.

“I will,” she said. She wasn’t entirely sure _what_ it was that she would do, only the longer she had to look at his pallid face, the more she wanted to hurt him. _Good thing I’m sleeping with a defense attorney_. “That’s a promise. Now get the fuck out of my office before you bleed all over the carpet.”

 

\----------

 

After Elektra moved her things back to her own place, Matt spent his days at the office and alternated his nights between seeing her and trying to track down the leader of the Enforcers. In some ways, he felt like he was living a triple life: the serious, responsible lawyer; the schoolboy chasing after a woman who was out of his league; and then the man in the literal mask, policing Hell’s Kitchen one asshole at a time.

His hunt for the new Enforcer boss had proved fruitless thus far, so he decided to stake out the Indian restaurant the mouthy one had mentioned on the night Matt followed Elektra. He had a pretty good idea which restaurant it was; Foggy had gone there once when his usual place was closed and said he nearly was mugged for his tikka masala.

Matt lurked on the roof of the building long after darkness fell, trying to ignore the overwhelming smell of curry that was downright nauseating to his overly-sensitive nose (there was a reason he never ate Indian food). A few customers came and went. Matt had to admit that, in this particular instance, it would be a lot easier if he could see who was wearing Enforcer colors and who wasn’t. Instead, he tried to tell if any of the customers were armed, and listened for the tell-tale swagger of a gangster patrolling his turf.

A man and woman turned down the block. Judging from the man’s footfalls and the way his pants rubbed together, he was heavyset; the woman wore the kind of stiletto heels even Elektra would consider precarious. Nearer to the restaurant, another man shambled about almost spastically, sweating in the cold air and scratching himself like he was covered in fleas.

“Charles,” the woman said, speaking to her companion. “Why we gotta eat at this place _again_? I don’t like it. The one cook always looks at me funny.”

“That’s cause you're looking so _fine_ , baby girl,” the man called Charles purred. “He ain’t never seen an ass like that back in his country.”

 _Christ_ , Matt thought. _And Foggy says I lay it on too thick with the ladies_.

The second man trotted toward the couple. “Hey, uh...Big Man, Big Man. You holding, Big? I just need a little taste, man...just a little bit.”

“What the fuck, man?” Charles snapped. “Do I look like the twenty-four hour Wal-Mart?”

“Fucking junkie,” the woman said.

“Just a taste, just a taste, Big. I’m hurting real bad, man. Real bad. Come on, Big.”

“Man, get the hell out of my face.” Charles pushed the addict out into the street. “You need a fix, go see my cousin down the way. You bother me again when I’m out with my girl, and it’ll be the last time, you hear me?”

The junkie was already shuffling down the street in the direction Charles had sent him.

“I thought your cousin was in Philly,” the woman said.

“He is.” The pair shared a good laugh about that.

Matt found the scene hypocritical and typical - the dealer’s open contempt for his customers, the disgust for the sickness his products created and perpetuated. They wanted to live in their cushy world of dirty money, but when confronted with the harsh reality of what their product did to people, to the community, the unassailable truth that they profited off of others’ misery, they couldn’t look it straight in the face.

 _Disgusting_ , Matt thought. He didn’t recognize this Charles - or Big Man, or whatever else he was called - from any of his earlier encounters with the Enforcers, but he was selling drugs in their territory, which meant he had to be affiliated with the gang. _Good enough_.

Matt scrambled down the side of the building and pressed himself flat against the brick, warmed from kitchen inside. There were no customers in the restaurant, only the same three heartbeats that had been there all evening. Hopefully the workers knew how to mind their own business.

Matt stepped out onto the sidewalk, blocking the couple’s route to the restaurant’s door. The woman immediately started to scream. _Shit_ , Matt thought. _Just go away_. He grabbed Charles by the lapels and forced him off the sidewalk and into the relative privacy of the alley adjacent the restaurant. It was like pushing a drum full of water that was dragging its feet. Unlike Ox, Charles wasn’t mostly muscle, and he doubled up in pain when Matt punched him in the gut.

“Where’s the man who killed Toby Edwards?” Matt hissed.

Charles didn’t respond. Instead, he shouted to his girlfriend, “Trina, get out of here! Run!” _She’s not running anywhere in those shoes_ , Matt thought. But the woman didn’t even try to walk away.

“I’m not leaving you with this crazy motherfucker!” she shouted. “I’m not leaving you, baby!” In his head, Matt sighed. This was hardly the time for Bonnie and Clyde. She continued to scream.

Matt snatched the gun that was about to pop out of the waistband of Charles’s pants, ejected the clip, cleared the round in the chamber, and pulled the slide clean off, tossing each piece in a different direction. He punched Charles in the face.

“Where’s the man who killed Toby Edwards?” he repeated. When the man didn’t answer, Matt kicked him in the ribs. He heard the tottering of heels behind him, but ignored the woman - Trina - in favor of hitting Charles again. Suddenly, Matt felt something large, but soft, smack him in the side, swing again, then hit him on the back. Trina was trying to beat him with her purse.

“Get away from him!” Trina screamed. Matt didn’t bother trying to dodge her; the blows didn’t hurt any more than bumping into a wall. He caught the bag mid-swing and twisted it from her grasp and threw it out into the street. He hoped the woman would go off and try to collect her phone and lipstick and whatever else before it fell down a storm drain or got run over by a car.

But he clearly underestimated her affection for this idiot. She switched to hitting Matt with her fists, leaving him no choice but to push her out of his way, her shoes causing her to topple over with a shriek.

He realized he had underestimated Charles’s feelings as well, because he charged with a roar when his girlfriend went down, and the force of his weight was like a battering ram, knocking Matt on his back.

“Get your hands off my girl!” Charles’s punches were clumsy and slow, and Matt easily rolled out of their way, springing to his feet. He was starting to get annoyed now. This time, when he hit Charles, it was hard enough to knock one of his teeth loose.

“Where’s your boss?” Matt demanded. “I know he killed Toby Edwards.”

“Then you know why he ain’t gonna tell you nothing!” Trina screamed.

Charles spit out blood. “Toby? That little bitch? Who gives a shit about him?”

“I do.” Matt broke Charles’s nose. He hit him in the face. He hit him again and again. Until the man collapsed to the ground. Until Matt felt his knuckles going raw. He demanded that Charles tell him about his boss with each blow. But each time Charles refused, made no sound but groans and wet gasps.

A wail brought Matt back to reality. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Trina was screaming, crying. He hadn’t even noticed her trying to pull him off of her boyfriend. There was blood, teeth, scattered all over the concrete. He knew Charles couldn’t take much more. Not without killing him. And he knew Charles wasn’t going to talk either.

“That kid didn’t tell anyone where to find Ox,” Matt said. “Your new boss did.” He knew the man wouldn’t believe him, not right away. But the seed was planted. He took off down the street, chased by the woman’s sobbing and screams.

“Hey! Hey, hey, hey! Mr. Devil, hey-” It was the junkie from earlier, stumbling towards Matt. _He must be desperate if he thinks I'm going to help him_.

“I’m supposed to, uh, supposed to tell you, you, um, tell you…uh, Fall Fest on S-saturday at nine o’clock. Oh, um, p.m. That’s right, p.m.”

“What?” Matt said, bracing the man. “Who told you to tell me this?”

The addict backed away, cringing, but still twitching all the while. “Just supposed to tell you, and I’ll get it...I’ll get it, you know. I just need a taste…” He began to trot down the street and Matt had no choice but to follow, wary that he could be walking into a trap. He sensed a few people in some of the buildings he passed, but they were all relaxed or asleep. The only other person on the street was a homeless man who, if not for his heartbeat, Matt would have mistaken the smell and huddled shape of him for a pile of garbage.

“Ohh, yes, yes...there it is, I told you, there it is…” The man picked up a small package that had been placed next to a porch stoop, the baggy making a crinkling sound as it was opened. Heroin. Matt smelled it right away. The junkie rubbed a bit of it on his gums and slunk off to fuel his demons for the next few hours.

But there was another scent here too. Faint, but lingering. Like gunsmoke and off-brand soap. Matt’s fists clenched reflexively, and he desperately strained his ears to hear anything over the pounding of his heart.

The sniper was here, maybe only minutes before. _He was watching me_ , he thought.

Matt pushed every one of his senses to its limit to try to pick up a trace of the man. It was almost unbearable, letting it all in at once, all the smells and sounds of the city, the feeling of the subway cars rushing by underfoot and the wind whistling through the alleys. _Focus_ , he told himself. He followed the smell down the block where it abruptly ended in the stink of gasoline and rubber. _He had a car waiting_.

Matt knew this message was almost certainly a trap, a trick, or maybe just more of the man’s twisted ‘fun.’ It didn’t matter. He was ready to end this.


	15. Chapter 15

“Here are the files from the D.A.’s office for the O’Leary case,” Karen said, handing a set of papers off to Foggy. She gave Matt a flash drive with the same information on it digitally.

“And at 4:52! How considerate of them to send it over a full eight minutes before we’re supposed to go home,” Foggy said.

“Well, they’re obviously intimidated by our command of the law,” Matt said. “They have to resort to cheap tricks to keep us at a disadvantage.”

“Or they think if they can drag us around in circles long enough, we’ll give up.”

Matt grinned at his partner. “Then they don’t know us very well.”

“No, they do not.” Foggy leaned back in his chair and turned to Karen. “It _is_ almost quitting time, you know.”

“I know,” Karen said.

“Then why aren’t you getting ready to head out?” Foggy asked.

“Well, if you two are working late...” Karen said.

“Hey. At least one of should enjoy their evening,” Foggy said.

Matt nodded. “Go on. There’s nothing more you can do tonight.”

“Alright…” Karen said hesitantly, then went to her desk to gather her things. She came back with a piece of paper in her hand. “Hey, uh, are you guys going to this Fall Fest thing? Someone left a flyer in the door this morning.”

She handed it to Foggy. “Food trucks, live music, a ‘special’ guest speaker...but I don't see anything about a beer tent.”

“Trying to boost neighborhood morale,” Matt said, careful to keep his features neutral regarding the event.

“Hell’s Kitchen sure could use it,” Karen said.

“Yeah, but...no beer tent,” Foggy said. “Nothing boosts morale faster than a beer tent.”

Matt snickered and then turned to Karen. “I guess the answer to your question is 'no,' then.”

“Oh, okay...well, I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” Karen said.

After she left, Foggy said, “I think we need to find her a hobby.”

Matt laughed. “Karen? You’d be offended if she was rushing to get out of here every day.”

“I’m just saying, she should at least look happy when we tell her to go home for the day.”

“Maybe she has a crush on one of us.” Matt had to try very hard not to smirk.

Foggy hesitated for a moment and then asked, “Can you…can you tell that? With your super... whatevers.”

“I distinctly remember you telling me that that was ‘weird and invasive.’”

“It is! But I know you do it anyway.”

“Not with things that are personal,” Matt said. “Honestly, I don’t want to know. But speaking of Karen, this Fall Fest thing - make sure she doesn’t go. You too.”

“Why?” Foggy asked suspiciously. Matt knew he would. _No secrets_.

“The asshole who shot Hoffman and Elektra’s dad? He left me a message.”

“You, as in the mask?”

Matt nodded. “I think he’s planning something.”

“So...we’re going to call the police, right?” Foggy said. “That is what you do when you think a dangerous person is going to do something bad at a public event.”

Matt hadn’t actually considered contacting the authorities, but it gave him an idea. “You _should_ tip off the police. But wait until Saturday night. I don’t want them to shut it down ahead of time.”

“Matt, this guy could have a bomb or open fire on civilians-”

“He’s after me.”

“How do you know that?”

“Fisk...Fisk put out a bounty on the mask,” Matt admitted.

“Oh my God,” Foggy muttered. “He really thinks he’s going to walk, doesn’t he?”

“Or he’s just out for revenge,” Matt said.

“So, what? You serve as bait while the cops take him down?”

“I can track him,” Matt said. “While he’s trying to find me in the crowd, I’ll sneak up on him and hand him over to the cops.”

“Matt, this isn’t some hood rat who’s watched _Scarface_ too many times. This is a professional sniper, trained by the military, or SWAT, or...whoever. They’re trained to kill from, like, a quarter mile away. How are you going to take down someone like that?”

Matt didn’t understand why Foggy sounded so upset about this plan, since it involved turning the gunman over to the law.

“I don’t have to take him down,” Matt said. “I just have to keep him busy until the cops arrest him. Then he’ll give up Fisk for the Hoffman shooting, because why wouldn’t he? He’s got nothing to lose at that point. So even if Fisk beats all the other charges, they can still get him on conspiracy to commit murder. Fisk stays in prison and Elektra gets justice for her dad.”

Foggy sighed heavily. “Or...Daredevil gets his brains blown out.”

“Foggy-”

“Let me finish. Daredevil gets killed and the cops ID him as Matt Murdock. Even if they don’t charge me or Karen with anything - and that’s a big ‘if’ - I’ll get disbarred for sure. And Elektra? You think she’s acting reckless now? What do you think she’s going to do when she finds out you were killed by the guy who killed her dad?”

Matt refused to follow that train of thought to its natural conclusion. “Foggy, I’ll be careful. I promise.”

“Dammit, Matt. This isn’t about you being careful. This is about you being smart. You’re not invincible, not even with that fancy costume of yours. You know what hubris is, right?”

“Of course I know what hubris is.”

“Well…” Foggy trailed off like he expected Matt to finish the sentence.

“Well, what?”

“You took down Fisk. And I’m not knocking that accomplishment, believe me. But...maybe you’re feeling a little overconfident?”

“We might not get another chance to catch this guy,” Matt insisted. Foggy just wasn’t getting it. “Or maybe he’ll find another time to try and kill me, a time when I’m not prepared, when I’m not on guard. At least this way I know what I’m walking into.”

“Dammit, Matt,” Foggy said. “I hate this.”

“I know you do. I’m sorry.” Matt really was. “If you can think of some other way…” He held up his hands in a welcoming gesture.

“Dammit,” Foggy growled. He let out a deep sigh. “As much as you piss me off sometimes, I don’t think I could handle it if something happened to you, buddy. That time I found you, you know, at your apartment...okay, I know there was a lot of yelling, but I couldn’t stand to see you all beat up like that. I don’t want to find you in even worse shape. Just remember yours isn’t the only ass on the line.”

 

\----------

 

When the night of Fall Fest finally came, Matt had to forcibly push away the doubts that kept creeping up in his head. There was no room to second guess himself tonight. _Everything is in place_ , he reminded himself.

Foggy had one of Matt’s burner phones to call in the tip, so there was no possibility of the police tracing it back to him. Matt carried another, its number programmed into the phone Foggy had. He didn’t like dragging his best friend into this, but as Foggy had said, this was not your average street thug. He needed Foggy to monitor the situation on the ground. Matt had also stashed a set of regular clothes in the back of a narrow alley several blocks from his apartment, in case the police or media presence got too intense for Daredevil to make his escape.

An entire street block had been barricaded for the event, lined with trucks smelling of grease and meat and gasoline. Portable lamps and heaters buzzed in the chilly fall air like country insects. On the far end of the street a band played covers of classic rock songs. More people had turned out than Matt expected - a pleasant surprise under any other circumstance. There was no beer tent, as Foggy had lamented, but more than one person took furtive sips from small bottles concealed in coat pockets.

Matt lingered atop the roof of an empty rowhouse one street over, out of sight but close enough for him to sense what was going on. He concentrated not on the street, but the roofs, the balconies and fire escapes, the fourth and fifth story windows. Anywhere a sniper might find his perch. In spite of the bracing cold, quite a few people were lingering in those places, enjoying the music and shouting greetings down to their friends below.

 _He’s here_ , Matt thought. _He’s here somewhere_. Matt fell back on the research he had done on military and para-military sniper tactics throughout the week (while hoping he didn’t end up on a list somewhere). A highly-trained marksman with a fifty caliber rifle could be accurate at distances of over fifteen hundred yards - that meant he could be lurking nearly a mile away, so long as his view wasn’t obstructed. He might not even be in Hell’s Kitchen at all.

Matt knew he was going to have to move around to widen the area of his search. He kept low and quiet as he made his way across the rooftops parallel to the street of the block party, first toward the docks and the Hudson river, and then he planned to double back toward Times Square if he was unable to find the man. _He could be watching me right now through his scope_ , Matt thought grimly. The only thing keeping his skull in one piece was this lunatic’s addiction to fame.

The burner vibrated and Matt pulled it from one of the pouch pockets on his pants, crouching behind a chimney to answer it.

“She’s there,” Foggy said, his voice in a panic. He was breathing hard on the other end of the line. “Karen’s there!”

“Karen? You were supposed to make sure she didn’t go!” Matt struggled to keep his voice down.

“I did! I told her everything short of, well, the truth. She decided at the last minute when she found out that kid who died, his mom is giving a speech or something.”

“Shit,” Matt said.

“Then she called me an asshole for telling her not to go,” Foggy said miserably. “She said we should support our clients.”

“That sounds like Karen. Foggy-” Matt heard the distinct sound of a taxi honking its horn on the other end of the line. “Foggy, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to get her,” Foggy said. “Knock her over the head and drag her back, I guess. Which you are absolutely taking the blame for.”

“Foggy, don’t-”

“I’ll still call in your tip. Eight forty-five. I haven’t forgotten.”

“Foggy, please go back inside. I’ll-”

“Grab Karen out of the middle of the crowd? I know she’s Daredevil’s number one fan, but that might be pushing it. You’re not the only one who wants to protect people, pal. And _you_ need to stay focused on not getting shot.”

 _Dammit_ , Matt thought. Foggy was right. Matt hadn’t even found the shooter yet. If he went back for Karen, he would lose even more time.

“Be careful,” Matt implored.

“You too, buddy.” Foggy hung up. Matt set his jaw and put the phone away. By his estimation, he had about twenty minutes, maybe a little more, to locate the sniper before he commenced with whatever he had planned for nine o’clock.

Matt had gone far enough away that he could no longer make out the individual voices at the block party, but the speakers were still audible at this distance. The band had stopped playing, and Matt knew it was too much to hope that Mrs. Edwards would give her speech in the next five minutes and Karen and Foggy would go home. It was far more likely that she - or whoever the next act was - would start at nine.

Matt picked up his pace as much as he could without being reckless. There were many tall warehouses down near the docks, abandoned or at least not guarded at night, places a sniper could make his nest with no fear of being interrupted. For Matt, that meant any people he sensed inside those buildings were probably up to no good.

About three blocks down from Fall Fest, and before he reached the water, Matt froze. There was _something_ across the street and several hundred yards away, something halfway between a sound and a feeling, wavelike vibrations traveling from the source through the pavement and up the beams into the soles of his feet. Matt blocked out every other noise, every smell and taste and feeling and honed in on the peculiar sensation. A deep, slow, rhythmic pounding, like a bass drum. Sloshing. Vibrations spreading outward and back in on themselves. It was a rooftop water tower. Something was disturbing the liquid inside.

Matt broadened his focus, like zooming out on an image, and heard the steady heartbeat, smelled the gunpowder and cheap soap, and knew he had found his man. The sniper was laying on his belly on the platform next to the water tank, his foot knocking against it as he adjusted his position. His gun wasn’t trained on Matt. It was pointing at the crowd down the street. Matt ran.

“...very special guest…” came over the speakers.

Matt leapt across an alley to the next rooftop. He slid down the fire escape.

“...my son Toby, he was eighteen years old…”

He sprinted down the alley and scaled the wall of the building adjacent the tower.

“...thought they were his friends. But gangs are never your friends. They’re never your family…”

That was when Matt felt it. Like that night Elektra confronted the man in the car, the shooter’s energy changed. A deep breath, held in his lungs. Muscles in his arms and back tensing. The joints and tendons in his hand yawning as his finger squeezed the trigger. And in the space between two heartbeats, a deafening roar.

At such close vantage, the sound of the fifty caliber rifle clawed through Matt’s eardrums and bored into his brain, forcing his hands up to his ears and his knees to the ground. In that moment, when it felt like all his senses were short-circuiting, all he could think was that Foggy was right. This was a terrible idea. Matt may have trained himself to withstand the noise from a handgun or the smaller rifles carried by thugs on the street, but this gun was larger and more powerful. It was too loud.

When he began to recover, he heard the sound of the shell casing pinging off the rooftop, the clicking of the bolt as it placed another bullet into the chamber. Further away there was screaming.

“No!” Matt threw one of his sticks at what he thought was the long barrel of the gun - it was still smoking in the cold air - but the shock to his ears had given him the equivalent of double vision. He missed. Another shot rang out and the noise forced Matt to the ground.

The shooter taunted him. Matt couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, but Daredevil’s presence was now known. The man didn’t try to flee, and he didn’t turn his gun on Matt either. He calmly chambered another round, scope still aimed somewhere out into the street.

 _He’s killing them_ , Matt thought. He threw himself at the water tower, groping for the ladder that seemed to be on his right and simultaneously on his left. He didn’t care if he fell to his death in the street below; he had to try to stop the man from shooting anyone else.

He was halfway up the ladder when another shot cut through the night. Matt desperately clung to the rungs to keep from falling. Five round magazine. He recalled from his research that five rounds was the standard clip size for rifles of this caliber. Two more shots left. _Foggy and Karen_.

Matt charged the narrow platform surrounding the water tank. His footsteps must have been enough to throw off the man’s aim, because he was taking longer to shoot. Matt turned the corner of the square platform and was now facing the sniper, only about ten feet away. The planks seemed to shift under Matt’s feet, and he had to grab the side of the tank to steady himself.

“You must be part bloodhound, Red. I’m impressed you found me.” The gunman chuckled. “I reckoned you’d be down there, pushing little old ladies out of harm’s way.”

“I’m the one you want,” Matt said, stalling for enough time to get his bearings. “Leave them out of this.”

“I already told you how I wanted this to go, boy.” The sniper held up the stick Matt had thrown at him, waving it in an admonishing manner. “We still got time to make the eleven o’clock news.”

The gunman rolled off the platform and into the empty air. But before Matt could cry out, a parachute billowed out and instantly arrested the man’s fall.

 _Shit_. Matt knew where he would be going once he hit the street. Matt slid back down the ladder of the water tank and onto the roof. He sprinted forward and leapt to the building adjacent and jumped down the fire escape. His ears had finally recovered from the gunfire, and he was able to get a clear sense of the street and the location of the man he was chasing. The discarded parachute flapped lazily on the sidewalk. Next to it was the sniper rifle. Matt knew better than to assume his enemy was now unarmed.

Fall Fest had become a mix of screams, shouts and sirens, the smell of blood more powerful than any of the dishes the food trucks were selling.

“Run!” Matt shouted over and over, even as he knew he was being drowned out by the pandemonium. People were clustered, huddled up, trying to avoid shots from above, unaware that the killer was rapidly approaching on foot. Police cars whizzed down a street parallel, and then came back again, seemingly driving in circles.

“Stop! Police!” Matt realized they were yelling at him, two pistols trained on either side of him. But that was all they were armed with - no riot shields, no helmets, no kevlar vests. These were basic patrol officers. Was this all that had been sent to respond to Foggy’s tip?

Matt obeyed the cops and threw his hands in the air, but frantically tried to direct their attention to the real threat, who was still running toward the crowd.

“On your knees!” One of them shouted. Another brandished handcuffs. “On your knees, now!”

A sudden disturbance in the air pressure alerted Matt to an incoming gunshot, and instinctively he flipped out of the line of fire. But it wasn’t the cops shooting at him. The one with the handcuffs toppled to the ground. The other police officer ran for cover. As Matt ducked into an alley, he heard one of them calling ' _Officer down_!' on the radio. The gunman was shooting again.

The shooter turned and opened fire on the terrified crowd. People scattered in every way, making it impossible for the police to return fire without hitting a bystander. Matt plunged into the chaos. The people who streamed past him registered only as fleeting blurs, but the shooter remained constant, solid, more like a pillar than a person.

“ _Enough_!” Matt shouted.

“Having fun yet, Red?” The rest of what the man said was drowned out by helicopter blades chopping through the air. It swirled overhead, probably catching the pair of them in its spotlight. _There’s your eleven o’clock news, asshole_.

The shooter raised his pistol. Matt walked toward him. Again, the man’s breath hitched. His arm tensed. At the exact moment he pulled the trigger, Matt rolled sideways. He felt the heat of the bullet as it grazed his shoulder, slicing through the leather of the suit, but not the protective layer underneath.

At this, the gunman’s sadistic conviviality transmogrified into pure, red rage. “Impossible!” He bellowed. “You...! That’s _impossible_!”

 _Now’s my chance_ , Matt thought. With the shooter’s full attention focused on him, Matt lead him out into a side street and away from the crowd. Police had now arrived en masse, and again called for the pair of them to stand down. With no hesitation, the gunman shot any who stood between himself and Daredevil in the head.

Matt had lost count of how many people this monster had shot by now. _No more_. He turned into an alley that dead-ended in a chain-link fence.

“You’re a dead man,” the shooter cried, taking aim again. Matt tossed his remaining stick at the man’s forehead. The gunman shot it out of the air. _He’s got to run out of bullets soon_ , Matt thought.

The police caught up to them then, again ordering both of them to stop. As the shooter turned at the distraction, Matt charged him, ducking into a slide and taking the man’s knees out from under him. Matt grabbed the gun. The man punched him in the face with his free hand. As they wrestled for control of the weapon, Matt overheard an order on the radio come in, authorizing the officers to kill one or both of them.

 _Come on_! If they would just give him enough time to disarm the sniper, the police could have him as far as Daredevil was concerned. But the cops didn’t get it. When the first shot came, Matt propelled both of them - still wrestling for the gun on the ground - back into the alley and, he hoped, into relative darkness.

“The devil is mine!” The gunman screamed at the police. “He’s _mine_!” He tried to aim his pistol back in the direction of the street while Matt tried to snap his wrist backwards. The police shot at them again, but the volley went far left, embedding into the brick. Matt brought a knee into the man’s chest. The man responded with another blow to Matt’s head.

As more police advanced on the alleyway, Matt finally pried the gun, finger by finger, from the shooter’s grasp. He tossed it toward the street. There were five cops approaching them - no, six. Armed. Enough to handle one gunner with no gun. With another blow, Matt extricated himself from the fray and climbed the fence. He scaled a nearby building to avoid the authorities that were now crawling the streets.

Shouts and a hail of gunfire drew his attention back to the alley. From the roof above, he sensed it - six unconscious men and both of Daredevil’s sticks rolling on the pavement. The shooter was gone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the comics, Matt has a real weakness toward very loud noises. Season 1 of the show really didn't delve into that (I don't necessarily think it needed to), but now that he's essentially wearing body armor, I think it's important for him to have some other vulnerabilities (aside from his hubris). And seriously, Hollywood, guns are LOUD.


	16. Chapter 16

Perhaps the only good decision Matt had made all night was to stash a change of clothes on the way back to his apartment. With every passing minute, more police and reporters poured into Hell’s Kitchen; even the rooftops, Daredevil’s usual refuge, were being searched in an effort to locate the sniper.

As soon as he was back into his street clothes with the suit and mask stowed in his bag, Matt whipped out the burner phone and called Foggy. When he heard his friend’s voice on the other end, his knees buckled in relief and he had to use his cane just to stay upright.

“Foggy, thank God. Karen?”

“She’s fine, Matt. We’re fine.” Matt slumped against a nearby building and willed himself to breathe again.

“Are you okay?” Foggy asked.

“I’m not hurt,” Matt said. He was most definitely _not_ okay. On the other end of the line, Matt heard Karen asking about him, and Foggy assuring her that he was fine.

“Foggy, you were right. I never should have...We should have called ahead, shut it down, we should-”

“No, Matt. _You_ were right, I...hang on.” Foggy said something to Karen about being right back and then his voice dropped to a whisper. “I called them, Matt. Just like you said. I told them it was going to be bad. And they sent two officers in a patrol car. They barely did anything when it...I don’t think they would have done anything at all if you called before. Matt, you don’t think Fisk still has people in the department, do you?”

“No. I...I don’t know. But not the ones tonight. Fisk’s guys were calm. Efficient. These cops were just...confused.” Any cop on Fisk’s payroll never would have tried to arrest Daredevil when they could have shot him. “Foggy, how many people…?”

“I don’t know,” Foggy said. “Karen and I got a bunch of people into the back of a store when it started. I didn’t see much. But listen, Matt. Either the cops are on the take, or they’re just stupid. And either way, you were right. They’re not going to stop this guy on their own. You have to - shit, Karen’s coming over here.” Foggy’s voice suddenly transitioned to its normal volume. “We’ll talk about this later. Be safe, buddy.”

Matt felt too sick to be vindicated by what Foggy had said to him on the phone. Innocent people were hurt; many of them were most likely dead. And for what? Matt hadn’t even managed to catch the bastard. The only thing he’d succeeded in doing was pissing him off.

He was stopped by police twice on the short walk back home, but quickly sent on his way both times after the officers concluded that a blind man was probably not the sharpshooter they were looking for. When Matt got back to his apartment, he sank to the floor after shutting the door behind him, unable to move from that spot, too afraid to turn on the TV or go on the internet and learn exactly what true hell he had brought to Hell’s Kitchen tonight. Foggy’s words were of little comfort; the truth was that that man was only out there shooting people to get to him. _Because_ of him. Matt was starting to wonder if all his running around in the mask was only making things worse.

“ _Elektra_. _Elektra_.” It took him a moment to realize his phone was ringing and the sound was not a manifestation of his thoughts. “ _Elektra_. _Elektra_.” The monotone, computerized voice seemed strangely insistent. She had to know what was going on in Hell’s Kitchen by now. Which meant she was probably freaking out. Matt took the call before it could go to voicemail.

“Matt? Oh my God, Matt!” There was a distinct note of hysteria in her voice. “Are you alright? Oh my God, Matt.”

“I’m home,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Then she lit into him. “What the fuck is wrong with you? God dammit, Matt! I called you about five thousand times. Why didn’t you pick up?” She repeated a variation of this tirade several more times before he actually got a chance to speak.

“I’m sorry. My phone was off. I’m sorry.”

Elektra let out a frustrated sigh. “I’m coming over.”

“No,” Matt said automatically. “He’s out - I don’t think the cops have found the guy yet. Stay inside.”

“I’m, like, six blocks away.”

Matt felt himself start to sweat. “No, no, no. You should go home. It’s not safe.”

“Like it’s safer in my apartment? He knows where I live.” So, she had put that much together. “It was _him_ , Matt. I know it was.”

“Yeah,” Matt said quietly, non-committally.

“Matt, I really need to see you tonight.” All the anger was gone from her voice. Just vulnerability.

“Okay,” Matt said. He needed to see her too. He needed her to remind him why he put on the mask, why it was all worth it. He needed her to remind him that he wasn’t just getting people hurt, that he was helping them. And, most of all, he needed to not be alone.

When he opened the door for her, Elektra opened her mouth, preparing to launch into another diatribe, but when Matt threw his arms around her back and practically collapsed into her, she went quiet.

“Matt, it’s okay,” she said softly into his neck. _It’s not_ , he thought. _And I wish I could tell you, but I can’t_. At that moment, he thought her arms might be the only thing holding him together.  

 

\----------

 

Elektra was dreaming the same dream she’d had ever since she saw that ex-cop being shot on live TV. In the dream, it was her father walking up the courtroom steps, his head exploding into a hundred bloody pieces, his body crumpling boneless to the ground. And she was the one walking alongside him, covered in blood and brains and bits of skull. Screaming. In the dream she was herself and she was watching herself, hovering outside of her body and staring into her open mouth as she felt the sound leave her throat.

There was nothing she could do. Every time the dream began, she knew how it would end, but she could only watch as her legs carried her up the white concrete steps and into the horror. Part of her wondered if her mind took her back to the dream on purpose, in the futile hope that this time, things would be different. It never was.

She woke up. Breathing hard, she rolled over to see that Matt was still asleep, his eyebrows drawn together. It seemed he was having dark dreams of his own. She wondered if he ever had them about his own father being killed, and the thought made her feel selfish and stupid. He had already been through so much, and at an age when Elektra thought sadness was not getting invited to someone’s birthday party. _How did you survive this as a kid_? she wondered. _And all by yourself_?

She had known she was really in love with him when he told her all of these things for the first time, when she realized that she had never once heard him complain or lament his lot in life. When she realized just how extraordinary a man he was.

And she still loved him. Things were too fucked up for her to be _in_ love with him right now, to be filled with that giddy sensation of lightness and caprice. Her heart was a heavy stone; eventually it was going to drown her.

Elektra pressed her body against his and gingerly touched his face, trying to smooth away his deep frown. She touched the bruises beginning to form on the side of his head, where he claimed he had been knocked around in all the panic surrounding Hell’s Kitchen tonight. Another lie. Any one of his stories about getting hurt or scarred or not picking up his phone might be believable on its own, but taken all together it was all just too absurd. She didn’t know why he was lying to her, and she couldn’t press him on it because she was lying to him too. With every story he made up, and every falsehood she told, she felt the gulf widening between them. And still they hovered together in mid-air like a couple of cartoon characters, believing they were safe as long as they didn’t look down.

 

\----------

 

When Elektra woke the next morning, Matt was still in bed. She thought by some strange miracle she had managed to get up before nine, but when she checked the time on her phone it was well past eleven. She doubted he had slept very well through the night, and so she left him alone as she rose to take a shower. He was lying in the exact same position when she got out of the bathroom.

Elektra walked over and stuck her finger under his nose. “What are you doing?” Matt asked. He didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes, but his voice was clear, free from sleep.

“Just checking to make sure you're still breathing.” Normally, that would have earned a quip from him, or a smile at least. But his face remained blank, his expression unreadable. “It’s almost noon,” she said.

“I don’t have anywhere to be,” he said.

Elektra raised her eyebrows at him, realized how pointless that was, and went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. _He’s still upset about last night_ , she thought as she tried to figure out where he kept the coffee grounds. When he had come to the door the night before, he was visibly shaking, like he was the one that psycho gunman had been shooting at. As much as she wanted to flatter herself, she didn’t think it was just because he was scared she might get shot walking over to his apartment.

Once she found everything, Elektra attempted to accurately measure the right ratio of grounds to water and then turned the coffee maker on, certain she had done _something_ wrong. That was why she had one of the machines that took the individual pods and absolutely no guesswork. While she waited for it to brew, she peered across the kitchen counter and the living room into Matt’s bedroom. He was still in bed.

“Do you want coffee?” She asked.

“No.”

“That’s good, because I probably fucked it up.”

No response. This was even worse than when she had found him so upset at the bar. At least he had talked to her.

Like many things, she was lousy at comforting other people. Her mother had never taught her, in word or deed, how to be maternal, nurturing and caring and patient. She had taught Elektra how to dress, how to look and how to act and how to carry herself like a queen, and somewhere along the way those more essential feminine qualities had been lost. Or maybe Elektra had never had any of them to begin with. It was easy to blame all your failings on a woman who had been dead for more than half your life.

Not knowing what to say to him, and realizing she was going to have to entertain herself, Elektra turned on the TV. Every station was buzzing with talk of last night’s shooting; even the ones that were showing regular programs had a ticker across the bottom of the screen with updates. As she changed the channel, she caught one news anchor at the start of her report.

“Troubling new information has emerged regarding the Hell’s Kitchen mass shooting on Saturday. According to a source inside the police department, a tipster contacted the local precinct prior to the massacre, but an inexperienced dispatcher failed to alert the anti-terrorist unit, sending only local patrol officers. Claims of an inept police department are especially disturbing with the murder rate in Hell’s Kitchen at an all-time high since the early nineties, largely due to an upswing in gang violence. The chief of police offered no comment on these allegations, saying only that they are working around the clock to catch the man responsible for killing seven people and injuring at least another dozen. The victims-”

“Turn that off,” Matt said from the bedroom. He did not ask her nicely.

Elektra sighed and put it on mute, cycling through the channels. _Seven people dead_. As soon as she heard the killer had used a sniper rifle, she knew it had to be the same man who had killed her father. What she didn’t understand was _why_. Her father and the ex-cop that had been shot were both targeted on purpose. Contract killings. A mass shooting at a public event didn’t seem to fit with the hitman’s cold, efficient style. Had Fisk hired him to create chaos before his trial? Or some kind of strange warning to any prospective jurors out there? Maybe Fisk just wanted revenge on the community for unmasking him for the monster he really was.

And she was still trying to figure out where the actual man in the mask, Daredevil, fit into all of this. Someone had captured video on their cell phone of the sniper trying to shoot Daredevil down last night, but then one of the text briefs on TV this morning speculated that he had incapacitated several cops and prevented the police from arresting the gunman.

Daredevil and Wilson Fisk were clearly at odds, but going against a bad man didn’t automatically make the other one good. He had stopped her from getting information from Wallenquist about the heroin shipments, and, for a moment, she had feared he was going to do worse, but then barely fought back and, even more bizarrely, ran away when she confronted him. Elektra despised people like Eric Slaughter and Wallenquist for what they were doing, but at least she could wrap her head around why.

The coffee machine beeped and Elektra poured herself a cup, dumped in a bunch of sugar and a bit of cream. _At least it smells good_. She cautiously took a sip. It wasn’t great, but it was drinkable, and she considered that a victory.

She cast one last look at the bedroom before hitting the caption button on the remote (the only one Matt hadn’t bothered to label in braille) and laid down on the couch. If Matt was so damn determined to take every tragedy in Hell’s Kitchen personally, she didn’t know what she could say to talk him out of it. He had told her last night that his friends were safe, so she knew it wasn’t personal. But he was Catholic, so maybe it was his solemn duty to feel responsible for everything that went wrong in his backyard.

With a twisted fascination, Elektra stared at the silent images on TV. The footage of the sniper was shaky, grainy, or from hundreds of feet away, but she realized this was the first time she was seeing the man who killed her father.

She left couch and sat down inches from the television, trying to mentally catalogue anything and everything she could about the man. He wore a ski mask, so his features were indiscernible, but she could tell that he was most likely white. Tall, thin, dressed in dark, pseudo-military attire. Elektra kept expecting him to transform into something terrible, open his mouth to reveal sharp, carnivorous teeth or grow scales and sprout a pair of leathery wings. But he didn’t. He just looked like a man. The only thing that belied his true nature were his eyes, awful and black. _You_ , she thought. _I know what you really are_. _And I’m going to kill you_.

Elektra didn’t know how long she had been kneeling there, inches from the TV, when Matt finally emerged from his room. He stopped in front of her.

“What are you doing on the floor?”

“It’s him,” Elektra whispered. She pressed her finger against the screen where the man stood, trying to crush him beneath it. “On TV. It’s him.”

Matt felt around the back of the television and hit the power button. “I told you to turn it off.”

“No, Matt. I have to, I...” Elektra didn’t even know what she was saying, only that she needed to keep watching this man, that if she watched him long enough she’d learn some secret, glean some insight into how to destroy him.

“No,” Matt said. “You don’t.” He turned and went into the bathroom, leaving Elektra frowning at his back. When she went to turn the television back on, her phone rang.

“Hello?” she said. It wasn’t a number she recognized.

“Hello, Miss Nachos? This is Detective Brubaker with Manhattan homicide. I-”

“Natchios,” she said. “Natch-i-os. I’m not a god damn Mexican appetizer.”

“Of course,” the detective said brusquely. “I wanted to let you know that we’ve confirmed from the ballistics this morning that the rifle used in the Hell’s Kitchen shooting last night was the same one used in your father’s case.”

“And?” _I’m way ahead of you_.

The detective rattled off a list of names. “Are you familiar with any of these people? Any of them have, maybe, a connection to your father or his company?”

“No,” she said. They must have been the people who were shot last night.

“Well, if you can think of anything, give me a call. I’ll let you know of any more leads-”

“That’s it?” She had lost her patience for New York’s finest a month ago. “You don’t have anything else? No name? No address?”

“We’re giving it everything we’ve got to catch this guy.” _Christ_ , she thought. _I’d hate to see you on a lazy day_. “If you want a name, I believe the press are calling him ‘The Bullseye Killer.’”

“The Bullseye Killer,” Elektra repeated, incredulous.

“Speaking of the press, we’ll be releasing the information about the ballistics report in a conference this afternoon, so you'll probably get some calls. Have a good day, miss.”

The detective hung up and Elektra stood there with her mouth hanging open. _Have a good day_?

“ _Fuck_!” she snarled. “Those fucking vultures and their fucking headlines, I swear to fucking God…” She powered her phone down violently, like it was somehow responsible for all of this. _If they had a choice, they’d rather film a murder than try to stop it_. She sat there muttering about how journalists were the scum of the earth until Matt came out of the bathroom.

“Are you alright?” he asked her from the doorway.

“No,” she said. “Did you know they gave that asshole a name? ‘The Bullseye Killer.’ I mean, Jesus Christ, don’t they realize that these psychos thrive off this shit?”

Matt’s shoulders sagged. “They do.”

“I’m going to kill him,” she declared. “I have to. The cops are idiots and the press only care about getting a story. I have to stop him.”

Matt grabbed her by the arm and put his hands on her shoulders. For a moment she thought he was going to shake her, but he just stood there. “No,” he said. “This isn’t on you.”

Elektra shook her head. “No, Matt, I have to stop him. I can’t let this go…” She felt her rage giving way to grief. “He has to pay for what he’s done.”

“I know.” Matt drew her into an embrace, and with the way he clung to her, she wasn’t sure if he was trying to comfort her or himself.

“They said on TV that the cops really fucked up last night.”

“A lot of people fucked up last night.”

“Matt.” Elektra ran her fingers over the bruises marring his brow and the top of his cheek. He looked so miserable. She didn’t feel all that much better. “He’s going to pay for what he’s done. He has to.” _Because I don’t think I can go on if he doesn’t_.

 

\----------

 

Elektra insisted on accompanying Matt to church, and he didn’t have the energy or inclination to protest. He left her near the entrance to the building, by the candles one could light to honor the dead. Too many candles were lit today.

He continued into the sanctuary alone, kneeling in front of the crucifix and making the sign of the cross before taking a seat in one of the pews as far away from the other supplicants as possible. The morning service had long passed, but there was a handful of people here now praying, or maybe questioning, spurred on by the events of the previous night. _God didn’t allow this to happen_ , Matt thought. _I did_.

After the couple seated nearest to him filed out, Father Lantom took a seat alongside Matt in the pew. “Matthew,” the priest said briskly. “Is that young woman out there a friend of yours? Girlfriend?”

“Something like that.” Matt didn’t specify which of those somethings it was more like, since he wasn’t entirely sure himself. “Why do you ask?”

“You must have told her some pretty good things about this place. I just saw her put two hundred dollars in the donation box.”

Matt shook his head. “That’s just how she is.”

“Ah. Well, anyway...Mrs. Peterson back there is kind of hard of hearing, if you wanted to talk.”

He didn’t want to talk. He _needed_ to. Matt took a deep breath. “All the people who were hurt this weekend, who died...that was my fault, Father.” He kept his voice barely above a whisper, just in case.

It seemed to take Father Lantom an eternity to respond. “And how was it your fault, Matthew?”

“I could have stopped it, before it happened. But I thought,” Matt winced, “I thought I could stop him on my own. I _wanted_ to be the one to stop him.”

“Pride _is_ a sin, Matthew. But it’s not equivalent to murder.”

“It got people killed,” Matt said. “It’s basically the same thing. I thought…” He sighed. “All I ever wanted to do was help people. Help this city. Now I’m just making it worse.”

“You need to ask yourself if you’re really doing this to help others, or if you’re doing this to help yourself.”

“Help myself?” Matt asked.

“The last time you were here, you spoke of vengeance. Revenge for a friend who was hurt by the man whose life you spared. Is it your friend you’re concerned about or your own conscience, assuaging your guilt?”

Matt frowned. “I...I don’t know.”

“There’s nothing wrong with deriving a sense of satisfaction from the things you do, but the motivation has to come from outside yourself.” When Matt stayed silent, the priest went on. “We are judged by our intent as much as our actions, Matthew. If your motives are truly selfless, if you try to do all you can with the gifts God has given you...even if you fail, you succeed. Do you consider Him a failure?” Father Lantom turned his head and Matt thought he must be looking at the crucifix in the front of the church.

“Of course not.”

“We have the benefit of hindsight, though. Maybe this is blasphemous of me, but sometimes I wonder what He thought when they were nailing him to the cross. There was always that one line that stood out to me: ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ That hardly sounds like someone who knows He’s going to rise in three days.”

Matt cocked a small smile. “That _is_ kind of blasphemous of you.”

The priest laughed. “Maybe. Maybe the apostles kept that line in for a reason, though. To show us that it’s only natural to despair, to question our beliefs when things look their darkest. You know I don’t always agree with what you do, Matthew. But I do believe you were given your particular gifts with some purpose in mind, and it’s not my place to say what that is. Just remember: ‘Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.’”

Matt nodded, chewing over the priest’s words as the man went to attend another of his flock. Was it really pride driving him? Most people couldn’t do what he could. That wasn’t bragging; it was a fact. But being able to feel and hear and smell and taste far better than anyone else didn’t necessarily translate into policing the neighborhood in a mask at night.

Matt sighed as he rose from his seat. Once again, Father Lantom had left him with a bunch of hard questions and no easy answers. He walked down the central aisle toward the front of the church, the soft tapping of his cane echoing wildly off the vaulted ceiling. Elektra met him in the narthex.

“Feeling better?” she asked.

Matt answered truthfully. “I don’t know.” She grabbed his hand and he felt the traces of wax on her thumb and index finger. She must have lit a candle for her father while she was waiting. _This is why I do what I do_ , he thought.  _For her dad_. _For her_. He couldn’t stop now. He had to keep going.

 


	17. Chapter 17

A lone man stood at the end of the pier smoking a cheap cigar and whistling to himself. _Turk Barret_. Matt couldn’t believe this scumbag was already out of prison. 

He didn’t bother disguising his footsteps and felt the sound travel down the old, moldering planks to where the other man stood.

Turk whirled around, cigar flying from his hand onto the dock. “What the-oh, _shit_. Man, I ain’t even been out twenty-four hours and you’re already fucking with me? Come on!”

Matt was pleased that Turk recognized his new costume, since it was his tip (that Matt admittedly beat out of him) that had led to the creation of the suit.

“Yet, here you are. Waiting on a delivery?”

“Shit, man. I’m just enjoying the view. Now, leave me alone. I ain’t doing nothing.” He fingered the pistol tucked into his belt.

“Carrying a gun is a violation of your parole,” Matt said.

“You the five-oh now, man? Jesus,” Turk muttered. “Between you and baldy and the pee-wee gangsters, what am I supposed to do, huh?”

“You flipped on Fisk,” Matt said. Turk went for the half-spent cigar on the dock. Matt stepped on it and Turk cursed.

“Hell yes I did. I ain’t doing twenty-five years for his fat ass.”

“You tell the jury everything - and I mean _everything_ \- and I’ll make sure you don’t get shot.” As much as he despised him, Matt would protect Turk if he was going to testify at Fisk’s trial. _Deals with devils_.

“Come on, man.” Turk groaned. “I’d tell them about my own mama if you want me to, but that lawyer man said he don’t want me talking.”

Matt felt a chill go through him. Could the District Attorney be working for Fisk? “Why?” he demanded.

“The hell should I know?”

Matt clenched his fist and stepped forward. “ _Why_?”

Turk backed away. “I don’t know, man. I don’t! He just said something about how I never met with the big man himself.”

“Who did you meet with?”

“The cat with the glasses, mostly. Sometimes the Russians.” _All dead_ , Matt thought. It was easy to blame crimes on dead men.

“Then you’re of no use to me,” Matt said. “I guess you better keep your head down.”

“Oh, come on man! You think Fisk cares that the lawyer cut me loose? I talked, man. I know shit about him. You can’t just leave me out here!”

Matt shrugged and turned around, started to walk away.  

“I know shit about lots of people, man!” Turk called after him. “The boys running the Kitchen now!”

Matt turned. “The Enforcers?”

“Stupid name, right?” Turk laughed nervously. “They’re running a big dope operation out of the Kitchen now. Not as good as the Chinese, but-”

“I know that,” Matt cut off his stream of chatter. “Tell me about the man in charge.”

“Guy called Fancy Dan,” Turk said.

“And?”

“And...shit, I don’t know, man. I just got out, you know?” Matt spinning on his heel seemed to jog Turk’s memory. “Wait! There’s supposed to be something big going on next Friday! At the, uh… construction site down on 46th.”

Matt nodded and walked away.

“Hold up, man! That was something, right?” Turk shouted after him. “What am I supposed to do about this bullseye dude?”

“Like I said,” Matt called over his shoulder. “Keep your head down.”

 

\----------

 

If it had been completed, the apartment building would have been nearly as nice as Elektra's place in Chelsea. One of Wilson Fisk’s many abandoned projects in Hell’s Kitchen. She laid on her stomach atop some third floor scaffolding, rusty and rickety after being exposed to the elements for the better part of a year. From her vantage, she had a clear view of what would have been a central courtyard, concrete and cinder blocks surrounded on three sides by rotting drywall and steel beams. If she turned her head, she could see a place in the fence surrounding the construction site where the chain-link had been cut out, and the thug standing alongside the opening like a ghetto doorman.

Two more of them loitered below her: the man who had demanded a meeting with Slaughter the night she had followed Wallenquist and his meathead sidekick. Wallenquist had finally wised up and changed the password to his email, but hadn’t thought to change his calendar app settings, so she was still able to monitor his activities. Tonight’s appointment had nothing more than a date and address, but the head thug had demanded a meeting with Slaughter the last time they spoke. Elektra thought there was a good chance he might finally show his wrinkly old face.

She had her gun holstered inside her jacket and a knife strapped to either thigh. She still wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do to Slaughter if he didn’t comply, but she was determined to end it tonight. One way or another.

The bulky man, wearing a satin Bolts jacket, angled the blinding white beam of portable work light in the corners and crevices of the site. Elektra rolled onto her back and out of sight when he cast it her way. She had a pretty good idea who they were checking for, and it wasn’t her. But just because she wasn’t wearing horns on her head didn’t mean they wouldn’t mind her eavesdropping. Elektra hoped to avoid the gang altogether. If they wanted to sell heroin in Hell’s Kitchen, that was terrible but it wasn’t her problem. Her problem was who they were getting it from.

“Yo! They’re coming!” The man at the fence shouted. Elektra rolled back onto her stomach to watch the scene below. The big man settled the spotlight in the center of the courtyard and his boss - slight, dressed in an expensive but tacky suit - finished thumbing something into his phone and stored it in a pocket.

Two men ducked under the fence. The first was short and wearing large glasses; the second man stood taller, even though he was stooped with age, and surveyed his surroundings with a permanent expression of disdain. _Eric Slaughter_ , she thought with a smile. _Welcome back to New York_.

The leader greeted them with a jerk of his chin, as his two bodyguards flanked him in a way that was vaguely menacing. Wallenquist tried to affect a similar position alongside his boss, but looked more like he was ready to take a drink order than to crack skulls.

“You the man in charge?” the head dealer asked.

Slaughter sighed. “In this context, I suppose.”

The other man extended a hand. He didn’t wear gloves, in spite of the cold, probably to show off the rings he wore on nearly every finger. “Name’s Dan. On the streets they call me Fancy.”

Slaughter regarded the proffered hand like it was covered in warts. “Come on, man,” Dan said. “Is this any way to start off a new partnership?”

For a brief moment, Elektra wondered if Dan and his boys would take care of Slaughter for her, but the old man finally acquiesced and affected a brief handshake.

“What exactly are we here to discuss?” Slaughter said impatiently.

“The terms of our new partnership, of course.” Dan’s tone was pleasant, but there was an edge to it, like one wrong word could set him off. “I’m a different man than Ox. Much more... business minded.”

“I really don’t care how you run your ‘business,’” Slaughter said. “Our... _arrangement_ will be the same.”

“Mm, I dunno, friend,” Dan said. “Lately the Colombians have been whispering sweet nothings in my ear.”

“Do you realize who I work for?” Slaughter hissed. “Who I have to answer to?”

Elektra frowned. _My dad_? But that didn’t make any sense. Could Wilson Fisk really be coordinating all of this from a jail cell?

“You just said you was the man in charge,” Dan said.

“ _In this context_. But the man-” Slaughter swallowed his words when the smaller of Dan’s bodyguards pulled out his pistol. “What is this?”

Dan laughed and pointed to the shadows behind Slaughter and Wallenquist. “We got company, friend. But don’t worry. I got it handled.” The two men glanced behind them, and then quickly fell in line behind Dan and his crew. It was Daredevil.

 _Jesus Christ_ , Elektra thought. _Not again_.

“I want you and your heroin out of my city,” he said. Elektra rolled her eyes. Definitely, definitely had seen _The Dark Knight_ too many times.

“ _Your_ city?” Dan laughed. “Look around you, man. This city belongs to ghosts.” With one hand, he instructed the bodyguard on his left to lower his gun, while the other hand motioned the large man on the right forward. That man pulled off his jacket, revealing a solid, square physique, and a set of brass knuckles adorning each fist. Daredevil brought his hands up into a boxer’s stance.

Elektra silently unholstered her gun and laid there frozen, unsure if she should jump in and help, or let the devil of Hell’s Kitchen do all her dirty work, since he seemed so damned eager to do so anyway.

Daredevil easily dodged the first punch and countered with a jab to the big man’s side. The man grunted but threw another punch immediately.

 _I could shoot him in the back_ , Elektra thought. It was certainly a large enough target. But she wasn’t here for the gang, she reminded herself. She was here for Slaughter. And she needed to confirm who his new boss was before she could put a bullet in him.

The dance between Daredevil and the other man barely changed. The big guy would swing and miss, and his opponent would use the opening to turn him into a punching bag. And like a punching bag, he stood there and absorbed it all, with no sign of fatigue.

While the two fought, Slaughter stood there fidgeting, growing increasingly agitated. Dan pulled out his phone, and for a moment Elektra wondered if he was going to Instagram the fight, but he just punched a few things in on the keyboard and then put it back away.

“Ugh.” Daredevil groaned and staggered as the big man finally connected with his torso. Although he quickly regained his balance, Elektra could see his breath misting fast and shallow in the cold air. He was hurting.

 _Shit_. Just when she made up her mind to take brass knuckles out, Slaughter muttered something and headed toward the fence with Wallenquist on his heels. _Shit_!

Elektra crawled to the corner of the scaffolding and slid down one of the poles, grimacing as the rusty screws clipped her on the way down. Everyone was too distracted with the fight to notice her hugging the wall and the shadows behind them. Daredevil took another hit and the man with the gun cheered.

“Yo, you’re gonna miss the grand finale!” Dan shouted at Slaughter’s retreating back. “I got something real special planned for the Devil tonight.”

Elektra didn’t have time to contemplate what that meant. She ducked under some plastic sheeting and slid through a space in the drywall to the building’s exterior. She followed that around until she was face to face with Eric Slaughter.

“What?” He peered at her in the relative darkness. “ _Elektra_?”

She pointed her gun at his chest. “Did you have anything to do with it?” She had meant to say something about the heroin, but those words came tumbling out instead. “With Daddy? _Answer me_!”

“She’s crazy,” Wallenquist whispered.

“Shut the fuck up,” she said to him. If it came to shooting these two, he was definitely getting it first. She turned back to Slaughter. “You were his _friend_!”

Slaughter put his hands up. “I didn’t, Elektra. I swear it.”

“Then why are you doing this?” she demanded.

“I didn’t have a choice.” His eyes were imploring. “ _He_ didn’t either.”

“What?”

A loud whooping sound and the rattle of people hopping the fence caught her attention. Nearly a dozen men armed with guns, knives, and baseball bats flooded the construction site, forming a semi-circle around the man in the mask.

“Let’s go boys!” Dan shouted. “We’re gonna make some money tonight!” _What the fuck_?

Slaughter and Wallenquist had taken full advantage of the distraction. Elektra caught sight of them ducking under the hole in the fence and retreating out of sight. She looked between the street and the growing lynch mob surrounding Daredevil. It was one or the other.

 _You owe me, asshole_. Elektra aimed her pistol at the nearest goon holding an automatic weapon and fired.

 

\----------

 

The crack of a gunshot split the air. A man screaming. Smell of blood. An automatic rifle clattered to the ground along with two severed fingers.

The men surrounding Matt turned at the sound. Elektra always did know how to make an entrance. As much as he'd hoped she would have stayed out of sight, they were in this together now.

“Who the hell is this bitch?” one of the men said.

“Let him go,” Elektra demanded, cycling her gun at each of the gang members. There were probably more of them than she had bullets. She was putting on a tough front, but Matt knew she was afraid.

“She shot me!” The man kneeling on the ground cried, cradling his maimed hand. “This bitch shot me!”

“Let him go,” Elektra said again.

“Can’t do that, baby,” The Enforcer leader, Dan, said. He stood leaning against some drywall, hands clasped and unarmed, his men forming a kind of human shield in front of him. “And since you shot my boy here, we’re gonna have to teach you a lesson too.” He jerked his head in Elektra’s direction, and a couple of men broke apart from the pack.

Matt didn’t waste any time capitalizing on the distraction. He vaulted over the shoulders of the nearest man and brought his elbow down on the back of the neck of one of the two men advancing on Elektra. He crumpled to the ground without a sound. Elektra shot the other one in the kneecap. He went down screaming.

The gang responded with a volley of gunfire. Elektra took cover behind the man she had just shot. Matt dodged out of the way, backing himself right into a wall. The men with guns rounded on him and opened fire again, spraying bullets like paint.

Cornered as he was, Matt only had so much room to dodge. A bullet struck him in the chest, knocking all the air from his lungs, pain radiating up his ribs and all the way down to his fingers. As he gasped for air, he was hit again in the chest and then in the gut. The suit kept the bullets from tearing into his flesh, but it sure didn’t feel that way.

Elektra screamed and there was more shooting, but not at him. Matt staggered to his feet, trying to regain control of his senses. _Not her_ , he thought. _Please, not her_.

He plowed into one of the gunmen using his shoulder, and with all the grace of a buffalo. Elektra spun away from an assailant, then turned and slashed. The gun in her hands had been replaced by a pair of knives. She sliced through her attacker’s thick jacket with one blade and sunk the other one deep into his shoulder.

Someone yelled something about Daredevil being bulletproof, and the mob - still eight men strong - clicked open switchblades and hefted bats. Every time Matt dodged one blow he ran into another. They were all beating on him at once, and didn't seem to mind hitting each other in the process.

As he was bounced from one end of the throng to the other, Matt remained vaguely aware of Elektra on the periphery. The large man with the brass knuckles had gone after her. He had fought Matt silently, but now he taunted her with vile, sexual things. It made Matt want to knock out all of his teeth, even as one of his buddies smacked Matt hard in the knee with a baseball bat.

He groaned and doubled over. He caught the next blow with his hand right before it smashed into his skull and wrenched the bat from the man’s grasp. Matt pivoted and punched the man in the gut, but with his knee still throbbing he lost his balance and fell right onto another man’s knife. It managed to find a spot on his side where the suit, already weakened by bullets, yielded to the blade. Matt toppled to the ground.

There, on the cold concrete, time suddenly seemed to slow to a crawl. He was aware of the four men looming over him, each in mid-strike. He was aware of the feeling of blood leaking out of his side. He was aware of the blood dripping from Elektra’s hands, others' and her own, each drop hitting the pavement like a hammer. And he was aware of just how easy it would be to give up now, to surrender. It would be the easiest thing in the world. _But we always get back up, Matty_. His father’s voice echoed in his head. _Murdocks lose on their feet_.

With a great heaving cry, Matt rolled onto his back and brought his arms up just as the world went back to normal speed. The blows raining down on him glanced off his fists and forearms instead of his rib cage.

Five or six feet away from him, a body slammed into the drywall and went right through it in a hail of splinters. He could hear Elektra coughing and moaning on the other side.

The thought of her being injured was enough to spur Matt back onto his feet. He knocked one man aside with his fist and bolted to the hole in the wall, ignoring the the throbbing in his knee and the feeling of blood pooling beneath his suit. He ran straight into the slab of meat with the brass knuckles. The man was favoring his left leg and bleeding from several shallow cuts to his belly, but he seemed to be filled with a humming energy, no longer just going through the motions.

“Had enough yet, cunt?” The man made a kissing sound at her. “I can’t wait to hear you scream.”

In that moment, Matt wanted to kill him every bit as much as he had wanted to kill Fisk after Mrs. Cardenas was murdered. It was a very fortunate thing that he was equipped with nothing more deadly than his fists.

He punched the man square in the mouth. That part of him, at least, was as fragile as anyone else. Matt hit him again with his other fist, not even caring as he felt the cut on his side tear further. But then the mob was on them once more, before Matt could knock out every last one of his molars.

“Come on!” Elektra shrieked. He felt her grabbing his arm, pulling him through the hole. “Come on!”

Matt had been so focused on the present that he hadn’t had time to assess the possibility of a retreat. She was right to run. Even he wasn’t so stubborn as to insist that there was a real chance he’d be able to finish off the whole crew with his injuries tonight.

He squeezed through, barely able to fit through the Elektra-sized opening, and as luck would have it, the creep with the brass knuckles tried to follow directly behind, effectively plugging the hole.

“Come on!” Elektra said to him again, sprinting toward the fence. Matt trotted after her as quickly as he could, concern for his and her safety now quickly being replaced by worry for her discovering his identity. She scaled the chain-link easily, despite her gasps of pain. It was a little more difficult for Matt, but he waved her off when she tried to help him. They had slept together way too many times for her not to recognize his body if she put her hands on him.

“They’re coming!” she hissed, as he managed to swing his legs over the top. He landed mostly on his feet on the other side. Behind them were shouts and pounding footsteps and the sounds of guns rattling in hip pockets.

“I parked down here, two blocks down,” Elektra said. Matt knew he could turn and go the other way so she wouldn’t get more chances to find him out, and the men would follow him, not her. But he also knew he wasn’t going to make it more than a couple of blocks before the adrenaline wore off and he collapsed.

He limped after her down the sidewalk. He heard the clatter of automatic gunfire as a spray of bullets embedded into the asphalt on their far left. Elektra yelled at him to run. There was the deeper sound of a heavier weapon firing and a large bullet chipped off a hunk of brick wall over his head. Matt grit his teeth and pretended like the whole side of him wasn’t soaked in blood, like his knee wasn’t already swollen to nearly twice its size. He ran, catching up with her as she turned down an alley and jerked a tarp off her car.

“Get in.” The top was down (in November - _classic Elektra_ , he thought) and she jumped into the driver’s seat, not bothering with the door. Matt did the same on the passenger side, albeit a lot less gracefully. Before he was even settled she was peeling out of the alley and into more gunfire.

Elektra weaved from side to side down the street, going at least sixty miles an hour and somehow keeping her Porsche from spinning out of control. She hit the turn at the next cross street so hard the tires squealed and Matt had to grab onto something to keep from flying out. After two more turns like that one, she slowed to a more reasonable speed (for her).

“ _Oh my God_ ,” she said. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my _God_.” He felt her heart rate and breathing start to slow even as his own was still racing.

The only thing keeping his adrenaline up was the fear of Elektra discovering it was him behind the mask. And that was good, because Matt knew he was going to be hurting even worse than he already was when it wore off.

“Here,” Matt’s voice sounded harsh, hoarse, without even trying to disguise it. He pointed toward the next street corner. He didn’t know where they were, only that they were far enough away from the people who were trying to kill him. Maybe he’d crawl off into another dumpster for the night.

“No,” Elektra said. “I’m taking you home, Matt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elektra knows Matt is Daredevil? Whaaaat?! 
> 
> Exactly how and when she came to that conclusion will all be hashed out in the next chapter, I promise! For now, I wanted to end on a cliffhanger to hopefully entice a few of you back after the new season drops tomorrow.
> 
> And as for why Elektra is using a pair of knives instead of her traditional sai - my version of Elektra isn't the seasoned assassin we're used to seeing in the comics. She's trained and she knows how to fight, but she hasn't been doing this long enough to really have a signature weapon yet.


	18. Chapter 18

“Wha...what?” Matt clearly had expected Elektra to take all his bullshit at face value.

“Come on, Matt. I’m not _that_ stupid.” Elektra drove past the corner where he had asked her to stop and continued toward his apartment, following a circuitous route just in case someone tried to tail them. At the next stop sign, she felt under her seat and pulled out a sweater and handed it to him. “Here.” Under the light of a nearby streetlamp, she could see his costume - and her car’s leather interior - were slick with blood.

Matt pressed the shirt against his side. “How...how did you know?”

“Bruises, scars, not answering your phone while ‘Daredevil’ is running around on live TV? There are only so many coincidences I can take at once.” Still, she hadn’t been one hundred percent certain until tonight. The way he moved, the sound of his voice - she knew Matt too well not to recognize him.

Matt didn’t say anything, but sat there, breathing heavily. It was hard to tell if her answer had satisfied him just by looking at his chin.

Elektra winced when her left hand instinctively grabbed the wheel as she eased the car into a turn. There was a deep gash across her palm; her knife had become so slick with others’ blood that her grip had slipped and she cut herself on her own blade. She tried to clear her blood on the steering wheel with the sleeve of her jacket, but only succeeded in smearing it. She was definitely going to need to find an auto detailing place that didn’t ask any questions.

“I know how you feel about Hell’s Kitchen,” Elektra said. “And the way you acted after that asshole shot it up, like it was your fault or something...it all started to add up.”

“It _was_ my fault,” Matt said miserably. His teeth started to chatter.

Elektra frowned at him. Did his ridiculous devil mask or batsuit or whatever it was have some sort of technology that allowed him to see, that kept him from running into buildings while he chased down criminals? She didn’t bother to ask. _How_ he did what he did wasn’t important.

“Are you…” Matt stopped, swallowed. “Are you mad?”

“No.” Elektra shook her head. She had enough secrets of her own that she couldn’t begrudge Matt his. “I...I don’t know what I am. Confused, I think. Not mad.”

“Elektra, my senses, I…” For a brief moment, his body went limp and he lurched forward before righting himself.

“We can talk about this later,” Elektra said. “How do I get you home without anyone seeing?”

“Alley...there’s an alley behind my building...we can take the fire escape to the roof.”

“Okay.” _He’s fading fast_ , Elektra thought. She floored it to the alley in question.

She swiveled her head back and forth as she helped Matt out of the car. They were alone. She left Matt leaning against the wall as she pulled down the ladder of the fire escape, and had to push him up the rungs. With one arm slung over her shoulder and the other clinging to the railing, they trudged up the stairs of the fire escape to the roof.

Matt winced, groaned with every step. Left little drops of blood behind. She thought she was bearing at least half of his weight and her own cuts and bruises screamed in protest. At least no one was around; if someone saw them, she had no idea what she would do or say.

When they got to the roof, Matt’s chest was heaving. She felt each of her heartbeats through the throbbing in her hand.

“Come on, Matt.” Elektra nudged him toward the door to the stairwell. “Just don’t make me drag you down the stairs, okay?” One of his legs was dragging. She was starting to get scared. If she could just get him in his apartment and out of that absurd costume, she could call 911 and make up something about a mugging.

“Alright, Matt. Here’s the door.” She kicked it open with her foot. “Please don’t fall down the stairs.” He felt around until he found the wall and braced himself on the way down. Keeping him on his feet was wearing _her_ out.

“Seventh floor.”

“What? This is the eighth floor.”

“Other door to my apartment,” he wheezed. He had to stop moving just so he could talk. “On the seventh floor.”

“Okay.” When they got to that door, Elektra let out a sigh of relief and hauled him inside, only to be greeted with another set of stairs down to his living room. “Shit.” If he’d had carpet, she seriously would have considered sending him down on his backside.

“Ugh,” Matt moaned as he limped down the steps. He collapsed halfway on the couch, his knees on the floor. Elektra slid down beside him and gave herself a moment to catch her breath, trying to blink away the pain. _How is it possible for your entire body to hurt at once_?

After she got her breathing under control, Elektra forced herself to her feet. “Okay. Okay, let’s get this off you.” She pulled off his shoes and gloves, but paused with her hand on the corner of his mask.

“Can I?” If there was something in there that helped him see, it didn’t seem to be doing him any good now. Matt nodded. Beneath the mask his nose was bleeding, and a bruise was starting to form along his hairline. She had to help him out of the top and pants like she was undressing a little kid.

“Oh my God.” Half a dozen bits of metal that were embedded in his suit popped off and clattered to the ground. They looked kind of like melted bottle caps, but she knew what they really were. Bullets. His stomach would be hamburger if it weren’t for that suit. _Okay, maybe the costume isn’t that stupid_. Instead, he was covered in massive welts, big black bruises all over his torso. There was a deep laceration on his side that was still bleeding, and his knee was swollen to the size of a softball. The rotating pink and white lights from the electronic sign outside his window made him look like a ghost.

“Matt, I’m going to call an ambulance.”

“No.” He reached out, groping for her in midair. She grabbed his hand. “Don’t.”

“I’ll put all your shit away first,” she said. “But you’re bleeding bad, Matt. I...I don’t know what to do.”

Matt paused for a moment. “It’s not fatal.”

Elektra stared down at him. The grimace on his face was hardly convincing. “How the hell do you know?”

“I know,” he said. “Trust me. Please.” It was weak, but he squeezed her hand.

“Matt…” she whispered. “You’re scaring me. If something happens to you…” Elektra had to take a moment to compose herself. “If something happens to you, I’m going to lose my fucking mind, alright?”

“Elektra,” he said. “It’s okay. I know it looks bad, but it’s not going to kill me. There’s...there’s first aid stuff under the sink. In the bathroom.”

Elektra sighed and went to retrieve it, stripping off her own bloody clothes along the way. She grabbed a couple of towels and turned on the overhead lights in the living room as Matt slid into a sitting position on the couch. When she opened the box, she saw there were several different types of band-aids, gauze, ointments, something that looked like pliers…

“I don’t know what any of this stuff is.”

Matt stuck out his hand and she handed the kit to him. He fingered the wound on his side.

“You’re going to have to stitch me up.”

“Matt! I don’t even know how to sew on a button.”

“I’ll show you. Let me see that hand.” Elektra sat down beside him, putting her injured palm in his lap. It was still bleeding. He ran his fingers over the cut gently, but she still hissed in pain.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s going to hurt.” Matt pulled a few things from the kit and explained to her how to sterilize the needle and clean the wound, how and where to place the stitches. She bit her lip and watched him work the thick, black thread in and out of her skin and tried very hard not to throw up.

“Elektra,” he said. “Breathe.”

“Do you seriously have to use this thick string? I look like some kind of _Frankenstein_ thing.”

“Oh,” Matt said. “It’s a really bad time to make me laugh.” The grin on his bloody, pale face made him look ghastly. After ten stitches, he knotted and cut the thread and wrapped a clean bandage around her palm.

“My turn,” Matt said, turning his body with a long groan so that his injured side was facing her. Elektra took a deep breath and told herself to pretend like she was making a pillowcase, which would have been a lot easier if she’d ever made a pillowcase before.

“Are you _sure_ we can’t go to the hospital?” She asked.

“You can do this.”

 _You are such an asshole_. That irritation was enough to motivate her to jab the needle into him to get started, but then he rested his head on her shoulder, and she felt him flinch every time she stuck the needle into him, and she just started to feel bad.

“Who came up with the ‘Daredevil’ thing anyway?” She asked, trying to distract herself.

“The papers.”

“Pff.” Elektra got to the last stitch, knotted it, and cut off the excess thread. “Of course they did.” She bandaged up all of the smaller wounds on his body and then he pulled a couple of splinters out of her back.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Matt finally said. “I just wanted to protect you.”

Elektra rolled her eyes. _Which one of us got shot tonight_?

“Lay down. Rest.” She helped him off the couch and into the bedroom.

“Thank you, for tonight,” Matt said as she was covering him up in his bed.

“Yeah.” Elektra grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt out of his dresser and put them on.

“Don’t go,” Matt said. “Please.”

“I have to move my car,” she said. “If it gets towed with blood all over the seats, there are going to be a lot of questions.”

“I’m sorry...about your car.”

“I don’t care about my car, Matt.” Elektra looked around the room. “I realize this is probably a stupid question, but you don’t happen to have a flashlight, do you?”

Matt’s expression softened. “No. Sorry.”

“I’ll use my phone then. I’ll be back.” Elektra grabbed another towel and put on one of Matt’s coats, since her jacket was all bloody. She went out the door that led to the roof and shone the light of her phone’s screen in the stairwell, looking at all the little puddles of blood dotting the grimy tile. His blood. Her blood.  

Elektra slid down the wall and put her head in her hands. _What the hell is he doing? What the hell are YOU doing_? She could still feel the way the men’s flesh yielded to her knives and hear the screams of the man whose fingers she shot off. In the moment, there was not time to think about what she was doing, no time to be afraid, but now the fear washed over her in waves. _I could be dead right now_. _Matt could be dead right now_.

She had said she would do whatever it took to avenge her father. And now she saw just how far she might have to go.

 

\----------

 

When Matt woke the next morning, he could barely believe that he wasn’t alone. _She stayed_. _She knows and she stayed_. He had tried to keep himself awake while Elektra left to move her car, but quickly succumbed to exhaustion. But she came back.

Elektra laid next to him in the bed, their bodies not touching, like there was a wall between them. She was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling (at least, that’s where he assumed she was looking) and her heart rate and breathing indicated that she was awake. If only he could tell what she was thinking. _She stayed_. It was already going better than he expected.

Matt started to roll onto his side to face her, but the pain ricocheting up his torso kept him pinned in place. He groaned. Nothing about Elektra’s body language indicated that she knew or cared that he was awake, even though she must have heard him.

“How’s your hand?” Matt ventured. Even talking was painful.

“It hurts.”

“Yeah…” There were a thousand things Matt wanted to say to her, wanted to ask her, but he didn’t know where to start.

“What do you think happened to those guys we fought last night?” she asked, still looking at the ceiling.

Matt frowned. “Do you really care?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just want to know.”

“I don’t think you killed any of them, if that’s what you mean.” There wasn’t enough blood.

“Hm.” She didn’t seem relieved to hear that. She didn’t seem to have much of a reaction at all. “Did you know there was going to be so many of them?”

“No,” Matt admitted, embarrassed. “It was kind of an off-night.”

She didn’t laugh at the lame joke. “Is that how you got all those scars? ‘Off-nights?’”

He thought back to when the Russians had set a similar, but cruder trap, and when Fisk and his ninja friend had lured him out later on. “Something like that,” he said.

“I meant what I said last night. That if something happened to you, I’d lose my mind.”

Matt grimaced. That stung worse than any of his injuries. He remembered what Foggy had said to him, how it wasn’t just his ass on the line. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not good enough, but...I’m sorry. For everything. I should have told you before, I just...I just didn’t want you to leave again.”

Elektra sighed, the first sign of any sort of emotion she had shown since they started talking. “I don’t want to leave, Matt. I don’t know how to feel about all of this, but I don’t want to leave.”

“Good.” Matt smiled. He reached out to grab her hand, but Elektra jerked away.

“Don’t,” she said.

Matt sighed. There she went, back behind that wall again. How long was it going to take to coax her back out this time?

“Why were you there? Last night.” Elektra said. “I thought maybe you were following me, but those guys - they were expecting you.”

“I was set up,” Matt admitted. It was careless of him not to anticipate that Turk Barret would take any and every opportunity to sell him (or anyone else) out.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Those guys are moving drugs through Hell’s Kitchen,” Matt said. “I went there to stop them.”

“You’re going to stop drug trafficking,” Elektra said skeptically. “Something even the government can’t do.”

“I know I’m not going to stop the entire drug trade on my own. But I’m not going to let them get away with it in my backyard.”

“Jesus Christ, Matt. When did you get so self-righteous?”

Matt frowned. “What?”

Elektra sat up in the bed. “Do you even hear yourself? ‘Get out of my city.’ That’s what you called it last night: ‘ _my_ city.’ Who the hell are you? The king of New York?”

“I’m the person with the power to do something about it.”

“The power? Or the ego? Look, Matt, I get stopping people from getting mugged or raped or whatever. It’s kind of - ” she made a disparaging noise, “but I get it. The cops can’t be everywhere, and by the time they get there, it’s too late. But this, like... _messiah-complex_ is not you.” She clapped a hand over her forehead. “But what do I know about who people really are anyway?”

“It’s not like that,” Matt insisted. “I just want to help people. I don’t expect anyone to call me a hero.”

“And how exactly were you helping people last night?”

“Well, scare off the drug dealers and-”

“Scare off the drug dealers with what? A costume and your fists? These are guy who shoot each other over street corners and _still keep going back to work_. You’re not going to scare them off with a beating.”

Matt frowned, thinking back to the fat man he had literally punched the teeth out of. And yet, that man wouldn’t talk. Never betrayed the gang. Maybe she was right.

But Matt wasn’t willing to concede that so easily. Instead he went on the aggressive. “What were you doing there last night, then?”

“The old guy is using my dad’s company to smuggle the heroin into the city. I’m assuming you knew at least some of that since I saw you on the boat that night. Well, he’s been M.I.A. ever since. Until last night. I was going to try to corner him after the meeting and make him stop, but then you showed up, and as much as I’m kind of annoyed with you, I couldn’t exactly let you get beaten to death.”

“Then you were there for the same reason as me,” Matt said. “To make them stop.”

“No,” Elektra said. “I was there to make them stop using my dad’s company. I _know_ I’m not going to stop people from selling drugs in the city.”

“I can’t just let them get away with it, Elektra. Not when I can do something about it.”

“You’re right,” she said. “You can call the cops.”

Matt scoffed. “You saw how well the police handled the last tip someone called in.”

“And where the police fail, Matt Murdock will succeed,” she said sarcastically.

“Why not? I know how to fight, and I’m not afraid.”

“You really don’t get it, do you?”

“I guess not,” Matt said. Foggy’s reaction to the discovery that Matt was behind the mask had conditioned him to expect questions about his senses, objections over breaking the law. But she didn’t seem to care much about either of those things.

Elektra let out a deep sigh and got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She came back with a rattling bottle of pills and a glass of water.

“Don’t you have anything stronger than aspirin?” she asked before swallowing a couple of the tablets.

Matt took a handful. He winced as he forced himself to sit up. “No. Narcotics dull my senses too much.”

“Well, _that_ at least sounds like something you would say.”

“What does that mean?” Matt fingered the wound on his side. It was still swollen and hurt like hell, but she’d done a pretty decent job of sewing him up.

“It means that I obviously don’t know you as well as I thought I did.” Elektra took another drink from the glass. “Seems to be a lot of that going around,” she muttered.

“Don’t be like that. Please.” Matt tried to flex his bruised knee and quickly decided against it. “I... _us_ \- that doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“How can it not?” Again, Matt tried to touch her, and again she pushed him away. “Matt, I can’t, I...I need some time to get my head around all of this.”

“Okay,” Matt said. He couldn’t believe how dispassionate he sounded. Inside he was screaming. “Okay.”

 

\----------

 

Two days later, Matt managed to drag himself to work, limping all the way. He still felt like he had been run over by a car, but it was starting to feel more like a compact sports car than a monster truck. And the only bruise on his face could be concealed under his hair (he was pretty sure), which meant he didn’t have to try to convince Karen he was a klutz for once.

“Hey Matt,” she said as he came into the office. “How was your weekend?”

“Uh…” Matt hung up his coat. “Not that great.” He patted his injured leg. “Pulled a muscle working out.”

“Oh no!”

Matt shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I’ll live.” His knee was exactly the least of his problems. Elektra had made it clear she wanted to keep him at arm’s length, even if her reasons were anything but transparent. And his suit had been shredded by bullets, so he was going to have to sort out having it repaired - and what exactly Daredevil was going to do in the meantime.

Foggy came in not long after Matt and laughed when he saw him limping to the coffee machine. “At least I go to the gym,” Matt said as he poured his coffee.

“Hey. I’ll have you know I work out...sometimes.” Foggy popped some kind of pastry into his mouth. “The ladies love _all_ of this. In fact, I had a date with one of the clerks from the D.A.’s office this weekend.”

Matt raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Sleeping with the enemy. Nice.”

“I took a page out of your book. Although unlike you, I actually try to get to know a girl before sleeping with her.”

Karen made an awkward sound, clearly intended to let them both know she was still in the room.

“What I’m getting at is I got the scoop on Fisk’s trial,” Foggy said.

“You sneaky bastard,” Matt said as he followed Foggy back into the main office.

“You did?” Karen asked. She sounded almost scared to ask.

“It was actually a pretty bad date,” Foggy admitted. “So let’s all pretend it was a reconnaissance mission from the start.”

Matt leaned against Karen’s desk, taking the weight off his injured leg. “Well? Let’s hear it, James Bond.”

Foggy inhaled sharply. “It doesn’t sound great.” Matt heard Karen’s heart start to pound. “Hoffman was obviously their star witness,” Foggy went on. “And obviously not taking the stand.”

“But they still have his confession, right?” Karen asked.

“It’s hearsay without corroborating evidence,” Matt said.

“Exactly,” Foggy said. “Fisk was damn good at covering his tracks. Remember how we couldn’t even find anything on him online? The D.A.’s entire case is pretty much built on witness testimony or circumstantial evidence.”

Matt shook his head. He had been expecting this, but couldn’t help hoping that the state had found some smoking gun to wheel out at the trial. _Carl Hoffman was the smoking gun_ , Matt thought. _So much for that_. Jury trials were always unpredictable, but even moreso when it came to how the jurors would react to witnesses. It didn’t matter how rigorous the selection process was; everyone was biased toward something.

“I’ve got a hunch what the defense’s strategy is going to be.” Since they were on the subject, Matt thought he might as well bring it up.

“You do?” Karen asked.

Matt cocked his head. “Thinking like a defense attorney’s my job.”

“This just involves thinking like a slimy one,” Foggy said.

Matt nodded. “Fisk kept himself pretty well insulated from all the illegal shit he was doing. He had that Owlsley guy handling all the money and his assistant - that guy who hired us -”

“James Wesley,” Foggy provided.

“Right. Wesley. He had Wesley acting as his mouthpiece. Who’s to say they weren’t doing all this behind his back?”

“Not the two of them, because they’re conveniently dead,” Foggy said. “Along with just about everybody else who took orders from Fisk directly.”

“It might be enough for reasonable doubt,” Matt said with a shrug.

“But Fisk, he tried to get away, he ran from the cops after they arrested him,” Karen said. Matt could feel her actually shaking through the desk. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought this up now.

“Circumstantial,” he said as gently as he could. “I’m sure the prosecution is still going to try to play it up, though.”

“The D.A. is good,” Foggy said, obviously for Karen’s benefit. “She’s a real pain in our asses, but I know she’ll pull out all the stops on Fisk.” _Especially since next year is an election year_. “Uh, on a brighter note, you guys are still coming for Thanksgiving, right?” Foggy asked. “Not that it will have any effect on the quantity of food my mom makes.”

“Oh, uh...yeah,” Karen said. “Yeah.”

Matt nodded. “I think your mom would hunt me down if I missed it.”

“And Elektra’s coming too?” Foggy asked.

She had seemed enthusiastic enough about the idea when Matt pitched it. But that had been over a week ago, before she started acting like he was toxic. “I think,” Matt said. He knew she didn’t have any other plans at least.

“Hey,” Foggy said conspiratorially. “Can we take her car? I think my dad would lose his mind.”

Matt laughed. “Not unless the two of you want to sit on my lap. It doesn’t have a backseat.”

“Well-” Foggy began.

“She’s not going to let you drive her car, Foggy. Ever.”

“Oh, come on!” Foggy grabbed his arm. “Hook me up, man. Just once.”

“No way. She'd kill anyone who comes between her and her car.” _And I'm not exactly high on her list of favorite people at the moment_. “I’m not going there.”

Foggy started to say something when there was a knock at the office door. It wasn’t a client, but a delivery man, and half a dozen different floral fragrances hit Matt’s nose at once.

“God damn, Matt. How many chicks are you sleeping with?” Foggy said.

For half a heartbeat, Matt actually allowed himself to entertain the absurd idea that Elektra had forgiven him and the even more absurd idea that she would ever send him (or anybody) flowers.

“These are for a Mr. Nelson,” the delivery man said.

 _You’re an idiot_ , Matt told himself. Aloud, he said, “Maybe your date went better than you thought.”

“Oh, uh...that’s me?” Foggy took the bouquet from the man and opened up the card.

“ _Dear Mr. Nelson_ ,” he read aloud. “ _Thank you for your bravery last weekend. Your quick thinking saved a lot of people, including me and my son. You’re the real hero of Hell’s Kitchen. Mrs. Deborah Lyle._ ”

“Is that about the shooting?” Matt asked.

“Uh, yeah…” Foggy sounded bewildered, but Matt could feel the heat coming off his cheeks. “I, well... I mean, Daredevil was the one who led the shooter away.” _He also was responsible for the gunman being there in the first place_.

Matt clapped his friend on the shoulder. “No. That lady’s right, man. You're a real hero.”

 _Okay Elektra_ , he thought. _I think I’m starting to see your point_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU FOR 1000 HITS!
> 
> I realize that's probably not a lot when it comes to posting on this site, but this is the first time I've ever shared anything I've written with strangers, so it still means a lot to me. I really appreciate anyone who's left comments, kudos, or just stuck around with me so far. I'm looking forward to sharing a lot more with you in the future!


	19. Chapter 19

Elektra handed an extra twenty dollars to the cabbie to encourage him to speed. It had taken her the better part of the morning to convince herself to attend Thanksgiving dinner at the Nelson house, and then she had to figure out what to wear. Her family had never done anything special on the holiday (since most of her family lived in Greece and therefore didn’t really care about Thanksgiving), so she had no idea how formal - or not - one was supposed to dress for such a gathering. And if there was one thing she prided herself on, it was being able to dress for an occasion.

In the end, she settled on a dress and pair of boots that could be seen as casual or formal, depending on one’s own style, but a sudden cold spell necessitated wearing her silver fur coat. Not at all surprisingly, Foggy Nelson had something to say about that as soon as she got out of the cab.

“How many small animals died to make that thing?”

Elektra smacked his stomach with the back of her gloved hand. “How many animals died to make _that_?”

Matt laughed at this, which made Elektra roll her eyes. _Stop trying to kiss my ass_ , she thought.

“Foggy was hoping you’d drive here,” Karen said. Elektra was relieved to see the other woman was also wearing a skirt and heels.

“My car’s at the cleaners,” Elektra said. She had waved a couple hundreds under their noses to pretend the bloodstains all over the upholstery were something more like red wine.

“At the ‘cleaners?’” Foggy asked, herding them up a block of rowhouses. She was somewhat relieved when Matt took Foggy’s elbow instead of hers. “Did you have a dead body in there or something?”

“It wasn’t quite dead,” Elektra said, falling in step beside Karen and behind the guys. Matt wasn’t limping anymore, even though she knew there was no way all his injuries had healed so soon. She had prepared a story in advance for the inevitable questions about the bandage on her hand.

“Well, if you need a lawyer, we could use some rich clients,” Foggy said over his shoulder. “Of course, Murdock here prefers to represent the innocent. Do we make exceptions for ones we’re sleeping with? I’m not real clear on that.”

“Foggy,” Matt said darkly. “Shut up.”

Karen shook her head at Foggy’s back and mouthed “sorry” to Elektra, who merely shrugged. If this was his lame way of trying to figure out what was going on between her and Matt, he was going to have to try a lot harder. Not that she could give him a straight answer if Foggy asked directly - she couldn’t even answer the question for herself.

Foggy stopped in front of a narrow, five story building painted a slightly darker shade of brown than the ones it was sandwiched between. He opened the main door and led the group through a poorly lit hallway to an apartment on the first floor. There was a wreath with an orange ribbon and plastic pumpkins hanging on the door and a doormat that said ‘ _Wipe your paws_.’ Even before Foggy knocked, Elektra could hear a small, yappy type of dog barking its head off inside the apartment.

Mrs. Nelson was a stout, middle-aged woman with dyed blonde hair and a pleasant smile. When she answered the door, she looked like someone had just brought her a million dollar check.

“Oh my goodness. Jim, do you have the camera?” she called over her shoulder. “They brought girlfriends!”

“Mom.” Foggy pinched the bridge of his nose. “I _told_ you.”

His mother ignored him. “Oh, and they’re both so pretty!”

“Mom, this is Karen. She works in our office. And Elektra. She’s, uh...she’s a friend from college.”

The four of them filed into the Nelson apartment and crowded into the tiny foyer to take off their coats.

“Let me get that for you, dear.” Mrs. Nelson practically tore the coat from Matt’s back and hung it up for him and placed his cane in the closet. She took Matt by the arm and left the other three to take care of their own things.

“Just ignore her girlfriend talk,” Foggy said, shaking his head. “Please. Please ignore it.”

A small, white pomeranian that appeared to be wearing some kind of Thanksgiving themed vest weaved in between all of their legs, continuing to bark. Elektra stared down at the dog, wondering how long it would take to shut up. It looked like a large rat wearing clothes.

“Sadie probably thinks you’re a giant cat or something,” Foggy said to Elektra, pointing at her fur coat.

“Your dog is wearing a sweater,” Elektra said. It continued to bark even after she had removed her coat and hung it in the closet. When Karen reached down to pet the dog, it turned to bark at her.

Foggy shrugged. “Not my idea, and not my dog.”

Elektra and Karen followed him into the living room where Foggy’s dad was vigorously shaking Matt’s hand.

“Always good to see you, young man. And thanks for keeping my son in line. If it weren’t for this guy, I don’t think he ever would’ve graduated law school.”

“Not true,” Foggy said. Matt chuckled.

Foggy introduced Karen and Elektra to his dad, who was an older, balder version of his son.

“Oh my goodness! What happened here?” Mrs. Nelson grabbed Elektra’s bandaged hand.

Elektra shook her head, feigning embarrassment. “Cooking - well, trying to. My first mistake.”

Mrs. Nelson patted the back of Elektra’s hand. “Well, no one expects us girls to do all the cooking anymore. I just do it around here because because I don’t want to eat hot dogs every night.” She turned to the group. “It will be just a few more minutes for dinner, everyone.” The dog circled around Mrs. Nelson’s ankles, whining. “You’ll get your dinner too, sweetie,” she cooed before turning to her son. “Franklin, go set the table. And _use the good silverware_.”

Foggy gave them an imploring look and trundled off to the kitchen. “She's nicer to the dog than me,” he muttered.

“Can I help, Mrs. Nelson?” Matt asked. Elektra rolled her eyes at him again. _God damn boy scout_.

“Oh, aren’t you sweet? No, you just sit down and relax, dear.” Mrs. Nelson more or less pushed him onto the couch.

Elektra sat down at the other corner, keeping Karen as a buffer between herself and Matt. _This isn’t awkward_ , she told herself. Repeated it like a mantra. _This isn’t awkward_.

The Nelson home was cozy and old-fashioned, small rooms crowded with chintzy porcelain knick-knacks and pictures of various Nelsons at different ages (including the dog), with plush, stained carpet underfoot. Mr. Nelson settled back into a well-worn recliner and to the football game on the television.

Karen got up and walked over to the mantel, examining a row of photographs in plastic frames. The barrier between Elektra and Matt was gone. _This isn’t awkward_.

“Is this Foggy?” Karen pulled one of the photos and showed it to Mr. Nelson, who nodded. “His hair was so long!”

“I told you he had a hippie phase,” Elektra said. Karen put the photo back and continued to snoop around. Elektra pretended to be interested in the football game while Mr. Nelson muttered to himself about the plays.

“Um, is his sister coming today? I wanted to meet her.” Karen asked. Along with pictures of Foggy at various ages, there were photos of a plump, pretty girl - and later woman - with dark blonde hair.

“No, she’s with her boyfriend in Florida,” Mr. Nelson whispered. He put his finger to his lips. “Shh. Mother isn’t too happy about that.”

The pomeranian, having done a thorough inspection of everyone’s feet, walked over to Matt, wagging its tail and whining at him.

“What do you want?” he said to it. _You’re talking to a dog in a sweater_ , Elektra thought.

“For God’s sake,” Mr. Nelson muttered. “She wants on the couch - which she is perfectly capable of getting on without help. The wife treats that dog like it’s a damn baby. Go on,” he said to the dog. “Get up on the couch if you want to.”

After it made a few more attempts at pleading, Karen took pity on someone - either the dog or Matt - and lifted it onto the cushion between Matt and Elektra. It looked quite smug as Karen scratched it behind the ears.

When something beeped in the kitchen, Karen said, “I better go see if they need help.” Elektra resisted the urge to grab her by the wrist and beg her not to go. She could have escaped Matt by going along, but she didn’t want to burn the Nelsons’ building down.

After a while of listening to Mrs. Nelson pepper Karen with questions, Mr. Nelson abruptly turned and looked at Elektra.

“Haven’t I seen you on the news?”

 _Christ_ , she thought. _Can we NOT talk about this today_? Instead she just said, “Probably.” Even though she had ardently avoided the press, that didn’t mean there wasn’t footage out there of her telling them to fuck off. A few of those vultures had even been waiting for her at the airport, her father’s corpse not even cold, and right there she had decided that she wanted nothing to do with them.

“Hmm,” Mr. Nelson’s eyes suddenly went wide, and then narrowed in a sheepish way. “Uh...I think that was the thing I was told not to talk about. Sorry.”

Matt rescued both of them by changing the subject. “Did you see the Thompson fight last week?”

“Did I?” Mr. Nelson seemed grateful for the out. “I thought he was a goner for sure in the fourth round.”

The two of them talked boxing while Elektra sank back into the couch, part of her wishing to disappear. Coming along today was a bad idea. But staying at home alone would have been even worse. It had always been just her and her dad on Thanksgiving after her mother died. They had made it their own special holiday, not about Pilgrims and Indians, but father and daughter. She needed a distraction from those memories today, even if it was a chasm of awkwardness between her and Matt.

After a while, Mrs. Nelson called them all to the dining room, the table laden with an impressive - and excessive - amount of food, mismatched china, and a yellowing lace tablecloth. A doily. Elektra didn’t realize those existed in real life.

“Smells good, Mrs. Nelson,” Matt said. The older woman hurried around and took Matt’s arm and guided him to a seat at the table.

“You can sit right here, honey,” she said. Elektra frowned. Even if he didn’t seem bothered by it, this whole ‘treating Matt like he was some kind of invalid’ act was starting to get on her nerves.

Foggy was forced into saying a very Catholic prayer before plates were passed around and everyone settled into dinner. Somehow Elektra ended up sitting directly across the table from Matt. So she got to look at him the entire meal. _Fantastic_.

Elektra took a few bites and found she had no appetite and pushed the food around on her plate.

“Don’t you like it?” Mrs. Nelson asked.

“Oh, no, it’s very good Mrs. Nelson.” It had nothing to do with the food.

“Watching your figure, huh? If you ask me, you could use a little meat on your bones.”

“ _Mom_.” Foggy mouthed an apology from across the table. Elektra shrugged. She had a Greek family, after all; being told she was too skinny was practically a mainstay of every family gathering.

Mr. Nelson clapped Matt on the shoulder. “Did he ever tell you girls what his dad did for a living?”

“He was a boxer,” Elektra said. And he was murdered. _Just like Daddy_.

“That’s right. I used to watch his matches on tv every week. It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it?”

“Jim. Language,” his wife interjected.

Mr. Nelson waved it away. “Ten years later my boy’s going to college with Battlin’ Jack’s son.”

“‘Battlin’ Jack’?” Karen asked.

“Man sure could take a punch,” Mr. Nelson said. He shook Matt by the shoulder. “Murdock versus Creel - now _that_ was a fight. Nothing like the crap they charge you for on TV these days. A hell of a fight.”

“Jim,” Mrs. Nelson hissed.

When Foggy’s dad mentioned Creel, Matt’s smile faltered and some of the color left his face. Elektra didn’t think anyone else had noticed. He used to talk about his dad a lot with her, but had only talked about how he died twice. Matt had been vague on the details, but she knew it had something to do with a boxing match. She wondered if the Creel match had been the one.

Matt had rescued her earlier in the living room, and Elektra didn’t want to be indebted to him. “What do you do, Mr. Nelson?” she asked.

“Me? Oh, I used to manage a hardware store. Now I’m just a handyman.”

“Have you been to their office?” Elektra asked. “Maybe you should swing by.”

“Hey,” Foggy said. “Everything works in our office. Most of the time.”

“I taught him how to fix things,” his father said, somewhat proudly. “Useful for any profession.”

“Well, _I_ wanted him to be a butcher,” Mrs. Nelson said. “Did he ever tell you that?”

Matt seemed to have recovered from whatever that was before. “ _No_ ,” he said sardonically. “ _Never_.”

Mrs. Nelson didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. “But he said he wanted to be a lawyer.” She shrugged. “How is he ever going to meet a nice girl if he’s working with criminals?”

“Innocent until proven guilty, Mom.”

“Karen’s a nice girl,” Matt said. Elektra noted the flush on both Foggy and Karen’s cheeks.

“And very pretty too.” Mrs. Nelson gave her son a pointed look. Karen laughed awkwardly. Foggy looked like he wanted to slide underneath the table.

Foggy’s dad pointed between Matt and Elektra with his fork. “And how long have you two been dating?”

Matt blanched, and Elektra considered joining Foggy down on the carpet.

“Uh…” Matt fumbled his words.

“We’re not,” Elektra said. She could have sworn she saw Matt flinch. “We’re just friends from college.”

“Do you _have_ a boyfriend?” Mrs. Nelson raised her eyebrows and jerked her head in Matt’s direction. _Oh my God, these people_.

“Mom,” Foggy said. “Can you mind your own business? _Please_?”

She gave her son an innocent look. “What? It’s just a question, Franklin.”

“I travel a lot,” Elektra said flatly. “For work.”

“Probably not a bad time to get out of the city,” Mr. Nelson said. “It hasn’t been this bad since, well...I guess you kids are too young to remember just how bad it used to be.”

His wife sighed. “It’s all that man’s fault. That Fisk.”

“It’s not _all_ his fault,” Mr. Nelson grumbled into his coffee. “We’ve got kids on the corner openly peddling drugs, a gunman shooting up public events, police running around like chickens with their heads cut off, _and_ that masked lunatic still beating people up at night. Holy sh - uh, good lord, I mean.”

“The masked man turned Fisk over to the cops,” Karen said. “And he tried to stop that shooter too.”

Elektra watched Matt closely as the group went back and forth discussing Daredevil. He kept his expression so neutral, kept so silent, that she thought it almost had to be suspicious.

“That doesn’t make him a hero,” Mr. Nelson said. “The Kitchen’s only gotten worse since he started running around.”

“Well,” Mrs. Nelson rose and began to clear the table. “I think we can all agree that Franklin was very heroic during that awful shooting.” She looked at Karen while she said it.

Foggy turned bright red. “Mom, it wasn’t-”

“It _is_ a big deal, Franklin.” Mr. Nelson scraped everyone’s leftovers onto a single plate. “Tell them, Jim.” She went into the kitchen, calling for the dog to get its Thanksgiving dinner.

“Your mother’s right, son. We’re very proud of you.”

“Sorry,” Elektra said. “What happened exactly?”

“I hid in the back of a convenience store while that guy was shooting everybody,” Foggy said. “ _Real heroic_.”

“You also got as many people back there as you could,” Karen said. “At least half of them were kids. And then he barricaded the door, and kept everybody calm. He’s being too humble,” she said to Elektra.

Matt grinned. “For once in his life.”

Karen (and Foggy, under protest) helped Mrs. Nelson clear the table while Matt and Mr. Nelson wandered back to the living room with a couple bottles of beer. Foggy eventually joined the other men to discuss some upcoming sports season, but Karen never came back out, leaving Elektra to watch Mrs. Nelson fussing over that awful dog.

“Do you have a back porch, Mrs. Nelson?” she asked.

“Oh, we have a backyard dear. Well...a New York City backyard. It’s right through the kitchen.”

Elektra grabbed her coat, cigarettes, and lighter and went outside, eager to avoid anymore of the older woman’s probing questions.

The Nelsons’ backyard was the size of a shoebox. The grass was dead and brown, but the concrete porch was impeccable. Karen was sitting in a plastic chair looking up at a flickering streetlight like it was a falling star.

Elektra pulled another one of the chairs up next to her. “You alright?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

Elektra held out her pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?” Karen shook her head. “Do you want one?”

“Uh...sure.”

Elektra lit her own cigarette and then Karen’s. Karen coughed a little after the first drag. It was oddly serene out here, despite the press of buildings all around them and the sounds of sirens in the distance, neighbors shouting or laughing closer by.

“Do you...do you think Fisk is going to get acquitted? After everything he’s done?” Karen asked her.

Elektra shrugged. “You probably know how trials work better than me. I think he’s determined to get free, one way or another. He killed his own allies. Maybe somewhere there’s a line he’s not willing to cross, but I’ll be damned if I know where that is.”

Karen shuddered.

“Matt told me about everything that happened to you guys last year,” Elektra said. “To _you_ , in particular.”

“Yeah,” Karen said softly. Elektra felt sorry for her. Karen was more puppy than wolf.

“Can I tell you something?” Elektra asked. “Between us girls. I swear, those two are living in 1950 sometimes.” She pointed her cigarette back at the house.

Karen nodded.

“Fisk had my father killed. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that now.” Elektra flicked the ash from her cigarette onto the concrete. “If he gets out, I’m going to kill him.”

Karen turned toward her, blue eyes wide. The halo of the street lamp reflected in her pupils. “What? How?”

“I’m not sure yet. I know some people in this city. Not great people. The kind of people who would do anything for the right price. I’ll figure something out.” She pointed toward the house. “Those guys believe in due process and all that bullshit, but Fisk isn’t a criminal. He’s a cancer. And the only way you get rid of cancer is to cut it out where it lives.”

After a while Karen said, “Good.” Elektra knew she’d understand. Men liked to call women the weaker sex, but when you got right down to it, she thought women had always understood doing what needed to be done. A mother bear didn't hesitate to protect her cubs, and she sure as hell didn't feel bad about mauling you afterwards.

“Have you...have you ever killed anyone before?” Karen asked her. She was shaking, scattering little embers and cigarette ash all over the ground.

“No,” Elektra admitted. “But I will if I have to.”

“I did something…I don’t know if he knows, but when he finds out...he’ll kill me.”

“Fisk?”

Karen nodded.

"You mean, besides digging into his past and all that?" Elektra asked. "What did you do?"

Karen shook her head. "I can't...I..." She brought a trembling hand to her mouth like she was trying to choke down something vile.

"Hey." Elektra laid a hand on Karen's shoulder. "I just said I was going to kill a guy. Whatever you did, I'm not going to judge you."

“I killed him.” Her voice was a whisper. “Um, F-Fisk’s number two.” She put her hand back over her mouth to stifle a sob. “He found out...he was going to kill me...so I...I shot him.”

 _Okay_ , Elektra thought. _That was certainly unexpected_.

“Please don’t tell Matt or Foggy.” Karen grabbed her hand. “ _Please_.”

“I won’t. Do you mean that guy with the glasses?” Karen nodded. Matt had said that Fisk killed him. “What happened?”

“He had a gun. He said he was going to kill Matt and Foggy, kill me, kill everyone. He made me feel like...like I was back in a place I swore I'd never go back to. When he got distracted, I grabbed the gun, and I...I shot him. You know how they always say ‘the gun just went off’? It didn’t. I pulled the trigger. _I_ did. I couldn’t let Fisk hurt anyone else.” Karen was crying now. Elektra squeezed her hand.

“Do you believe in miracles, Karen?”

“I don’t...I don’t know.”

“I don’t,” Elektra said. “I don’t believe God is just sitting up there and snapping his fingers whenever He feels like it.” Elektra pushed her hair out of her face. “I believe in choices. Where were are now, wherever we end up, it’s just the result of all the choices we’ve made up until that point. Sometimes they’re made for us, but most of the time they’re not. We’re in control of our own destinies, not some old guy in the sky. You made a choice, Karen. To protect your friends, to protect yourself. God wasn’t going to strike that guy down with lightning for you if you didn't pull the trigger.”

Karen looked at her, blinked, and scrubbed the tears from her cheeks. “Yeah.” She started to say something else but was interrupted by the back door creaking open.

“What are you two doing out here?” It was Foggy. He sounded slightly drunk, but with him it was hard to tell. “You’re missing the game.”

Elektra turned around. “Girl talk. You know, talking about our periods and shoes and stuff.”

“Ugh.” Foggy wrinkled his nose and started to go back inside.

“Hey,” Elektra called after him. “Come here for a sec.”

Foggy looked wary as he approached the two women. He raised an eyebrow at the half-spent cigarette between Karen’s fingers and made a show of fanning the smoke out of his face.

“Can you tell your mom to stop treating Matt like he’s some kind of retard?” Elektra looked up at him through her eyelashes. “It’s pissing me off.”

Foggy shook his head. “She never listens to me. But I’ll tell her. _Again_. Why do you care anyway? You’re ‘just friends from college.’”

 _God, you are annoying_. “Well, actually we were fucking until Matt did something that really pissed me off, so now I’m withholding sex in the vain hope that it will change his behavior,” Elektra said blithely. “I didn’t think your mother would appreciate that explanation, _Franklin_.”

“Um…” Foggy stood there with his mouth hanging open, and Elektra waved him back toward the door.

After Foggy left them alone again, she turned to Karen, “He makes it too easy.”

Karen laughed, recovered from her momentary anguish, but then her expression turned more serious. “Something happened with you and Matt?”

“It was stupid of me to think he was the exact same person he was in college.” Elektra dropped the butt of her cigarette and crushed it beneath her heel.

“Oh…” Karen stared out over the darkening skyline. “Is he really that different now?”

“Something broke,” Elektra said. _Something that’s probably been unraveling for a long time_. “And I don’t know if I can fix it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit fluffier than usual, but I managed to sneak in some character development, so I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> The idea of Karen and Elektra being rivals is awfully predictable, and therefore awfully boring, to me; I thought it would be way more interesting to make them friends. And why not? The actual show-canon may disagree with me, but I always got the impression Karen's crush on Matt had fizzled out by the end of Season 1, particularly after his big fight with Foggy and blatant lies to her. Plus Elektra and Foggy's mutual antagonism is hilarious and just so damn fun to write, I'd never want to trade that for some boring catfight.


	20. Chapter 20

Elektra sat on her bed, painting her toenails, listening to the talking heads on the television summarize the testimony given today at Fisk’s trial. Accompanied by court drawings in which Fisk seemed to loom over the jury even while seated in the defendant’s chair, the reporters squawked back and forth like vultures picking over a corpse. They didn’t care about Fisk or the things he’d done. When it really came down to it, most of New York didn’t _really_ care. It was just something to talk about around the water cooler, something to pretend they were entitled to have an opinion on. Wilson Fisk hadn’t taken anything away from them.

Elektra lit a cigarette. Ever since the night she confirmed what Matt really was, the night when she shot two men and stabbed and sliced several more, her craving for nicotine had returned with a vengeance. She didn’t bother to open a window, just sat there smoking on her bed, ashing it in a cup of tea that had gone cold hours ago.

Fisk being on trial made her nervous. It wasn’t that he might be found innocent and let loose back on the city; she - and Matt, evidently - would make him pay. But if he was found guilty, sent to prison for however many years, he would be beyond her grasp. _You’re a selfish bitch_ , she told herself. But knowing it was wrong didn’t change the way she felt. Even if he went to prison for the rest of his life for all the other terrible things he’d done, it would still feel hollow for her. Her father’s death would go unavenged. Elektra didn’t care if the world knew Fisk had ordered the hit and she didn’t care if formal charges were filed and New York Homicide got to cross one off their books. She wanted Fisk to suffer, and she wanted him to know that she was the cause of it.

Of course, there was always the one person she could trust to give her an honest and educated prediction on the direction the trial was going. _Matt fucking Murdock_. He had always been the sort of person who rushed towards danger instead of away from it; she could hardly hold that against him when she was exactly the same way. The Matt she knew - or thought she knew - might run into a burning building to save someone, but he’d let the fire department take over when it showed up. This Matt, this Daredevil (and what the fuck sort of name was that, anyway?) told the firefighters to go home because he could somehow do a better job than the guys with the ladders and fifty foot hose. _What happened to you, Matt_?

That was the question she really wanted to ask when she called him. Instead, she asked his thoughts on the trial. There was a long sigh on the other end of the line.

“It’s not looking good,” he said.

“Did you go?” Elektra asked. “To any of the trial?”

“No,” Matt said. “Foggy and I tried a couple of different days, but we couldn’t get a seat.”

“You don’t get, like, VIP access or something as lawyers?”

Matt laughed. “Not when you don’t work for the State.”

“Matt...he doesn’t know, does he?”

“What?”

“Fisk. Does he know it’s you behind the mask?”

“No,” Matt said. “I don’t think we’d be having this conversation right now if he did.”

Elektra grimaced at what he was implying. “What are you going to do if he gets out?”

There was such a long pause on the other end of the line that Elektra almost thought they had been disconnected. “I don’t know,” he finally said. He sounded afraid.

“Why didn’t you kill him? They said last year, you were the one who handed Fisk over to the police. So why didn’t you just kill him?”

“Because…” Matt took a deep breath. “Because sometimes I think that’s the only thing separating me from people like him.”

“Matt, you can’t actually believe that.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes, I...I don’t know.” If this was all a ploy to elicit sympathy from her... well, it was working.

“Do you want to come over?” She heard herself say.

“...Are you sure?”

 _Not at all_. “Do you want to or not?”

“Give me a few minutes.”

Elektra spent those few minutes trying to air out her bedroom and kicking things on the living room floor underneath the couch and coffee table. It wasn’t exactly clean, but it was clean enough.

Matt didn’t waste any time getting over to her apartment. When she opened the door, he stood there looking an odd combination of contrite and hopeful.

“We should talk,” Elektra said as she hung his coat on the back of a chair.

Matt sat down on the couch. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Elektra grabbed a couple of beers from the refrigerator and sat down beside him, handing him a drink.

“I want to know about Wilson Fisk.”

Matt had already told her things about Fisk that were more or less public knowledge - how he bought up real estate all over Hell’s Kitchen to transform it into his ‘brighter future,’ and how nearly all of his partners and subordinates ended up dead. But now she got the inside story - how his Russian partners had abducted a nurse after she stitched Daredevil up, how Fisk then murdered one of the Russians and blamed it on the man in the mask, how Fisk had pitted Matt against the Japanese hoping they’d take each other out.

“Wait...so you really did fight a ninja?” Elektra asked. “Or are you just saying that because it was a Japanese dude?”

“No,” Matt said. “I’m pretty sure he was actually a ninja.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “So you’re not the only weirdo running around in a costume.”

“It’s supposed to be a symbol,” Matt said a little sheepishly.

“Okay, Bruce Wayne.”

“It’s also bulletproof.”

“Well, that part I can appreciate.” When Matt had been shot by that mob, for one terrible moment she’d thought for sure that he was going to die. If looking like an idiot was the tradeoff for saving his life, it was one she could live with.

“Well, I don’t think he was Yakuza,” Elektra said, getting them back on topic. “Ninja costumes and swords aren’t exactly their style.” _Maybe a cosplayer._

“I’m not sure who he was with,” Matt said. “But I’m sure whoever it was, they blame me and not Fisk. He had the Chinese bringing in heroin, but I don’t think they were your typical organized crime, either.”

Elektra swallowed. “What, uh...so, what happened with that, exactly?”

“Fisk financed his projects with heroin back then too. The ring itself was run by an old Chinese woman.”

 _Onibaba_ , Elektra thought, remembering what Koji had told her.

“She…” Matt shuddered. “I don’t know, it seemed more like some kind of cult than a drug ring. Her people were all illegal immigrants, all brainwashed. She... _blinded_ them.” Matt was trembling.

“Wait...you don’t mean that literally?” Matt nodded. “Oh my God.” Elektra put her hand over her mouth. Of all the things someone could do to another person, they had somehow managed to hit him where it hurt most.

“She got away,” Matt said through gritted teeth. “Left the country I guess.”

“This, um...this heroin. Did it have a street name?” Elektra was sure Matt must have been able to feel her shaking through the couch.

“Yeah. Yeah it did. A symbol too. Uh...‘Steel Serpent,’ I think.”

“Oh my God.” Elektra knew she had to tell him. Honesty was a two-way street, and after all this time, she owed Matt a little bit of the truth.

“Matt, do you remember…?” Her throat felt impossibly dry. A drink from her beer didn’t help. “Do you remember when you ran into me the first time? At my dad’s house?”

Matt nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”

“I found something in the safe there. Records of...of things that weren’t always legal at my dad’s company.”

Matt paused. “You’re talking smuggling.”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded like it belonged to a little girl.

“That’s what you put in that safety deposit box, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I think that’s what the man who killed my father was looking for.”

“Oh,” Matt said, thinking. “So, that’s why he burned the place down. He couldn’t find it, so he tried to destroy it.”

“That would be my guess.”

Matt sat alongside her quietly, but she caught sight of his jaw clenching, like he was practicing saying something without vocalizing it.

“My dad, he...he did some bad things, Matt. I don’t know why. It’s not like he needed the money.” Elektra realized she was crying. “It was him. Smuggling the... the ‘Steel Serpent’ into the city. I just...I can’t understand it. I...oh, God.” Elektra brought her hands over her face and shook her head. For the first time in her life, she felt ashamed of her father, of the man she came from, the man who was part of her down to her marrow. She felt ashamed of herself. “I’m so sorry, Matt,” she said into her hands. “I swear I didn’t know.”

Matt went to put an arm around her shoulders, but stopped with his hand hovering in mid-air. Elektra leaned into his chest.

“Stop crying,” he said. “And stop apologizing. None of this was your fault.”

“But Daddy, he-”

“Why do you think Fisk had him killed? He must have wanted to stop. Maybe he was even going to go to the police. I’m sure your father was trying to do the right thing.”

Elektra took a deep, ragged breath and tried to wipe off her face. She wanted to believe that more than anything.

“My dad, he...he used to get paid to throw fights,” Matt said quietly. “Fix bets. I didn’t really figure it out until I was older. That’s why...that’s why they killed him. He didn’t want to do it anymore. For my sake.”

“What?” Elektra looked up at him. The number of times he had spoken of his father’s death were so few that she could recall each one individually, vividly. All the pain she felt, the grief, anger, confusion - he had endured it all at just ten years old, and had been living with it ever since.

“Maybe that’s what happened with your dad too.” Matt ran his thumb over her cheek, wiping away the moisture there.

“Let me help you,” Elektra said suddenly.

“Help me?”

“With Fisk, if he gets out. Or you can help me. Or whatever. He’s hurt us both. We should work together. The guy with the gun too.”

Matt frowned. After a while, he said, “You’re just going to go out without me if I say no, aren’t you?”

Elektra laughed, even though part of her still felt like crying. “You know I am. And I know you are too. So we might as well do it together.”

“Alright.” Matt said it grudgingly, but the hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “There’s one more thing you should know about Fisk.”

“Oh?”

“It wasn’t in the papers or anything. A reporter friend of ours found it out, and Fisk killed him for it.” Matt looked like he didn’t want to tell her. “His father was murdered too. When Fisk was twelve, he bashed his dad's head in with a hammer.”

 

\----------

 

Matt left the news playing on the TV at all times when he was home, aside from when he was asleep. Even then, his dreams were plagued by talk of Fisk’s trial. It was making him anxious. And even though the newscasters were just talking themselves in circles, he _had_ to keep listening, like it was a compulsion.

Days before, he had donned his old, black (so they said) costume, and took the damaged suit back to Melvin Potter, the child-like tailor who had constructed it for him.

“I keep seeing Mr. Fisk on the TV,” Potter said. “Is he still in jail?”

“He’s on trial,” Matt said. “He goes back to jail at the end of the day.”

“Okay. That’s good.” Potter said happily. “He can’t hurt people when he’s in jail.”

 _If only that were true_ , Matt thought.

“Is he going to be in jail for a long time?”

“I don’t know,” Matt said truthfully. “I hope so.” He left everything but his boots and mask at the workshop for repairs - and upgrades, according to Potter. Those might take a little longer, but Matt left that up to the savant’s discretion. Matt had also brought the bloody jacket Elektra left at his place after their encounter with the Enforcers and a pair of pants he’d grabbed off her bedroom floor when she was in the bathroom.

“I don’t think these clothes will fit you,” Potter said when Matt handed them to him.

“It’s not for me,” Matt said. “It’s for my friend, to keep her safe. Can you make her something like you made for me?”

“Okay.”

“Oh, but, uh...no mask,” Matt added. He might be able to talk her into wearing the rest of it, but she’d never be caught dead in devil horns.

Back at his apartment, he didn’t tell her about any of this when she came over for the evening. It might have been the first time ever that he could actually surprise her with something she couldn’t buy on her own, and he planned on taking full advantage of that - even if it wasn’t exactly something she had asked for. Plus, he knew he wasn’t entirely back on her good side yet.

“You brought dinner,” Matt said, smelling several different types of carryout Chinese food as he let her in. “We could have gone out.” _I need more opportunities to win some brownie points_.

Elektra hit the light switch in the kitchen. “I don’t want to go out,” she said, distributing the cartons on his kitchen table. Matt brought silverware and drinks, and they ate in a slightly uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by the talking heads on the television. _Maybe we should be drinking something stronger than beer_ , Matt thought. For better or worse, alcohol always loosened her tongue.

“Can I ask you something?” Elektra said abruptly.

Matt put his fork down. “I already said I’d tell you whatever you want to know.”

“It’s about your dad,” she said cautiously.

Even after all this time, talking about his father was still painful. But he motioned for her to go on.

“Did they ever catch the guy - or guys - who killed him?”

“No.” He clenched his jaw. The criminal lifestyle had caught up to all of the men eventually, in one way or another, but they had never been held accountable for what they did to Jack Murdock. _I just wanted him to come home_.

“How do you stand it?” she whispered.

 _I don’t know_. “I don’t really have much of a choice.”

It was definitely a night for something stronger than beer. After an even more uncomfortable silence, they finished their dinner and Matt grabbed two glasses and a bottle from a cabinet in the kitchen.

“You know I can’t stand whiskey,” Elektra said, taking the bottle from him.

“This isn’t the cheap stuff I drank in college,” Matt said. “Take your medicine. It’s good for you.”

She sniffed it and made a disgusted sound. “This smells like something I’d clean my floor with. If I cleaned my floor.”

Matt laughed. “It does not.” But he took the hint and grabbed her a can of coke from the refrigerator. He poured himself a double, and, despite her apparent disgust, she mixed a very generous portion of alcohol with the soda.

“I need ice and a straw.”

Matt rolled his eyes. “Yes, your majesty.”

After a couple of rounds, he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt, warmth spreading through his chest and feeling calmer than he had all week. From the amount of alcohol he could smell on her breath and skin, he knew she was getting drunk too. It was kind of pathetic that they had to get inebriated to talk to one another, but the conversation they’d had the night before had been a heavy one. And Fisk’s impending verdict had made everyone he knew - even Foggy - uncharacteristically introspective. It was a worry in the back of everyone’s minds, just waiting for a moment of silence to rear its head.

“You don’t have to stay in on my account,” Elektra said as she mixed herself another drink.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean patrolling the streets. Punching drug dealers in the face. Jumping off roofs and shit.”

“I thought you wanted to help me.”

“I want to help you bring down the guys who murdered my father. I can’t punch _that_ many people in the face because I’ll ruin my manicure.”

“It’s not exactly safe for me to be running around without a plan right now,” Matt admitted. “My suit’s being repaired. I have other stuff to wear, but it’s not bulletproof. And,” he knew she wasn’t going to like this, “Fisk put a bounty on my head.”

“A bounty?” The shrill sound of her voice and the sudden pounding of her heart told him she did not, in fact, like it. And a small, very selfish part of him was pleased.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Elektra said. She put her glass down on the table with a loud _thunk_. “All those guys that night, that’s why they were trying to kill you. For the bounty.”

Matt nodded. “They’re not the only ones who’ve tried.”

“Oh my God.” Elektra got up to get herself more ice. She scooped up a handful, then abruptly dropped it and slammed the freezer door shut. “Fuck, Matt!”

“What?” _What’d I do now_?

She swiped the whiskey bottle off the table and poured herself another drink - this time with no coke.

“Fuck!” she shouted again. “People are trying to kill you! For money! How are you not freaked out about this?”

“I am.” It helped that it wasn’t the first, or second, or tenth time people had tried to kill him. “I just told you I’m laying low.”

Elektra made a growling sound in her throat and stomped over to the couch. “This is fucked up,” she muttered.

“You’ll get no arguments from me.” Matt poured himself another double, then put the cap back on the bottle. That was probably enough drinking for the night.

“It’s fucked up,” she said again. “Are you _sure_ nobody knows it’s you behind the mask?”

“I’m sure.” Matt got up and turned off the TV. _No more Wilson Fisk tonight_. Not while she was here. “It’s not like anyone would believe a blind guy’s doing all this stuff anyway.” _Except for you_.

“They don’t know about the mask.” Elektra took a drink of the straight whiskey, coughed, then took another. “How does it work anyway?”

Matt frowned. “The mask?” _Work_? _Just how drunk is she_? “It’s a mask. I just put it on.”

“Yeah. But how does it _work_?”

Matt sat down beside her. He was tempted to laugh. “What in the world are you talking about?”

She made an exasperated noise. “How do you _see_ out of it?”

Matt paused. “What?”

Elektra laughed awkwardly. “I mean, it _is_ the mask, right? I don’t really know how else…” she trailed off.

 _Oh, shit_. He knew he should have been more suspicious as to why she had yet to ask him a single question about how he did what he did.

“You thought it was the mask.” He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. That was...a plausible guess. A little science fiction, maybe, but every bit as believable as the real truth. Maybe he would have to use that from now on.

“Matt…” Elektra said slowly. “Please don’t tell me-”

“I really can’t see. I never lied to you.” _I just didn’t tell you the whole truth_.

“Yeah, I know that.” She was starting to get annoyed. “I was going to say, please don’t tell me you’ve been doing all this shit, like, just relying on your hearing.”

“Well...not _just_ my hearing.”

“Oh my God, Matt! Are you _crazy_?” She smacked him on the chest. “It’s not my place to say what you can and can’t do, but Jesus Christ. What, do you think you have some kind of advantage at night? It never gets _that_ dark in the city, you know? Like, even in the middle of the night.”

“Just listen to me,” he said. “And don’t freak out.” _Please_. “After my accident, my other senses, they became heightened - and it wasn’t just to compensate for not being able to see. I could hear things no one should be able to: people talking down the block, a heart beating across the room. It was like that with all my other senses too.”

Elektra didn’t say anything, so Matt went on. “Do you remember the old man I told you about? The one who taught me martial arts? He taught me how to control my senses too, how to focus, how to keep them from driving me crazy.”

“But…” Elektra finally said. “How does hearing someone down the block keep you from running into walls?”

“It’s kind of like...sonar, I guess. Only it’s not just listening to the way sound bounces off things, but air currents, vibrations, even smells sometimes...all that is useful for locating obstacles, buildings, cars...but not so useful for telling if you’re scowling at me right now.” She hadn’t started yelling the f-word again, at least.

“I...I’m just trying to understand this.”

Matt wished he could explain it all better, but Stick had never really explained it to him either. The old man had only told him what he should be able to do, and then yelled at him for not figuring out how to do it fast enough.

“So...you can hear my heartbeat?” Elektra asked. “Like, right now?”

Matt nodded. It was beating faster than usual, but not so quickly that he thought she was angry. At least, not _really_ angry.

“I guess that explains a lot, then,” she said.

“It does?”

“Yeah. Like how you seemed so confident when you asked me out.”

Matt laughed, as much out of relief as amusement. “I was still terrified you’d say no. I know I should have told you before - years ago - but...I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want you thinking I was a freak or something.”

“Well, you’re definitely a freak,” Elektra said, running her nail across his jaw in a way that made him think very, very unholy thoughts. “You run around at night wearing devil horns. It has nothing to do with your hearing.”

Matt let out a long sigh of relief. “You know, you’re taking all of this a lot better than Foggy did.”

“Pff. That’s not surprising. I bet Foggy doesn’t have any secrets. People without secrets of their own don’t understand.”

“No,” Matt said. “They don’t.” Maybe someday she’d tell him all of her secrets too.


	21. Chapter 21

Matt sat at his office desk and pored over an endless stack of case files. It seemed like every time he was finished with one folder, Karen brought him two more. A year ago, he never would have dreamed it would be possible to complain about having too many clients, but here he was. At least it kept him busy and his mind off Wilson Fisk. Mostly.

Closing arguments in Fisk’s trial had been heard yesterday morning, which meant it was all in the jury’s hands now. Matt’s prediction of the defense’s strategy had proved correct; anything they couldn’t outright deny had been pinned on James Wesley, painting Wilson Fisk as an overly generous, overly trusting boss, whose only crime was wanting to see the best in his employees. It was downright nauseating.

Matt heard a truck pull up to the curb outside the building, which was a bit odd since the restaurant below them usually got their deliveries on Mondays, but he ignored it and continued to work. But a familiar pair of high-heeled footfalls stilled his fingers on the page. _What is she doing here_? he wondered. Not that he minded Elektra showing up at the office. It just meant he would be even more behind on his work tomorrow.

As Matt started to get up from his desk, a tapping started on the window behind Karen’s desk.

“What the hell?” Karen said, pushing her chair out. Elektra was throwing stones at the window, like this was some kind of 80s movie. Matt had to laugh.

Karen pushed open the window and a blast of cold air filled the office.

“Hey Karen!” Elektra shouted.

“Elektra?” Karen asked, bemused. “What are you doing?”

“Grab the guys. I’ve got some stuff for you.”

“You hear that?” Karen asked as Matt and Foggy both came out of their offices.

“We really don’t have time for this,” Foggy said.

Matt was already putting on his coat. “Since when do you not like surprises?”

Foggy sighed, making his displeasure known (although Matt knew he was just deliberately being difficult), and followed Matt and Karen down the stairs.

“Hey,” Elektra greeted them on the sidewalk. Two men opened the door on the back of the trailer.

“What’s this all about?” Foggy asked. “We’re kind of busy today. With very important work.”

“They got new furniture at work,” Elektra said. “I thought you guys could go through the old stuff before we donate it to...wherever.”

“We don’t need charity furniture,” Foggy said.

“Weren’t you the one who said you wanted ‘plantery’ and ‘chairs you don’t even know how to sit on?’” Matt said.

“Well, look through it if you want.” Elektra handed a piece of paper to Karen. “The guys will help you move stuff.” She spun on her heel and strode into the diner below the office.

“Stop being an asshole,” Matt hissed at Foggy.

“Since when do _you_ accept handouts?” Foggy hissed back.

“She said they were getting rid of it anyway. It’s not a hand-”

“So, this paper has a list of all the stuff in the truck,” Karen announced like she was talking to a room full of naughty schoolchildren. “I’m going to go through it now.” She read through the list aloud: desks, chairs, filing cabinets, shelves. If they accepted even half of it, there wouldn’t be any room left in the tiny offices of Nelson and Murdock for clients or lawyers.

Matt paid attention to Karen’s words, but he also listened for Elektra inside the diner. She ordered a cup of coffee and sat down at the counter. He really could have smacked Foggy right about now. This wasn’t her saying their office was a shithole and desperately needed an upgrade; this was her thinking of them and being generous in the only way she knew how. _That’s just how she is_.

Karen went around to the back of the truck to look at some of the things. “Wow,” she said. “This stuff’s in really good shape. I don’t know why they needed to get new things.”

Foggy took a breath like he was about to say something - almost certainly snide - but then stopped himself. _Thank you_ , Matt thought.

“Well, I’m not going to turn down nice furniture,” Matt said. “If there’s anything small enough to actually fit in my office.”

They ended up upgrading nearly everything in the office; even Foggy caved at the opportunity to swap the creaky vinyl chairs in his office for genuine leather. The movers took everything up and hauled the old stuff (crap) away. Matt went into the diner and got Elektra, insisting that she at least come up and have a look.

“So what do you think?” Matt asked her when they got up the stairs. “Are we starting to look like the real thing now?”

“This is great,” Karen said as she began to put her things away in the drawers of her new desk.

“This stuff is pretty swanky,” Foggy admitted, leaning in the doorway of his office. “Thanks.”

“Just think of it as a Christmas gift,” Elektra said quickly. Matt knew too much praise or gratitude made her uncomfortable, even if he wasn’t sure why.

“Christmas?” Foggy said. “You know it’s the first week of December, right?”

“Close enough.” Elektra handed Matt a card. When he opened it, it played the chorus of _Feliz Navidad_ in simple, electronic tones.

“I still remember that much from Spanish,” Elektra said. Matt laughed and handed the card to Karen.

“I think this is officially Nelson and Murdock's first Christmas card,” Karen said.

“It’s also to thank you guys for being so nice to me after shit really hit the fan this year,” Elektra said. “All of you.”

 

\----------

 

Two days later, Elektra stopped by the offices of Nelson and Murdock again, this time with two shopping bags and her arms full of fake pine tree. She banged on the office door with her foot.

“Hey! It’s you again,” Karen exclaimed when she opened the door. “And you brought us...a Christmas tree?”

 _I know_ , Elektra thought. _I need to find more friends to bother_. Aloud she said, “I’m, like, the skinniest Santa.”

Karen helped her carry everything into the office as Matt and Foggy came out of the conference room.

“If you’re fishing for a job here, you might as well forget it,” Foggy said. “We can barely afford to pay Karen _and_ now we have to buy leather polish.”

“Maybe I just love all of your smiling faces,” Elektra said. “Or, I was bored and really didn’t want to put up a Christmas tree by myself.” The implication of what she was saying was not lost on Foggy, who quickly dropped her gaze.

“Just keep it secular,” he muttered. “We don’t want to get sued for offending somebody.”

“Foggy, almost all our clients are Irish or Hispanic,” Matt said. “We could hang a crucifix in the window and they wouldn’t be offended.”

“Please don’t,” Foggy said. "Between you and my mother, I have enough Catholic guilt already."

“Just be glad I didn’t buy the pink tree,” Elektra said. _It was really cute_.

“Well, I agree that this office could use a little holiday cheer,” Karen said, looking through one of the shopping bags. “All of Hell’s Kitchen could.”

“I’ll leave that up to you two,” Matt said. “Decorating isn’t exactly my thing.”

“I’ll be honest,” Elektra said to Karen as she unspooled a length of tinsel. “I’m kind of shit at decorating too. So you decide where you want all this stuff, and I’ll help set it up.”

The guys went back into the conference room and back to work (or pretending to work) while Karen and Elektra unloaded the bags and sorted through all the decorations Elektra had bought on the way over this morning. As they experimented with different locations in the central room for the little, three foot tree, Foggy kept popping his head out of the doorway to offer unsolicited advice.

“Hmm…” Karen stared at a corner of the main office. “What if we put the coat rack over here and then the tree could go by the door?”

“You can’t move any of the furniture around,” Elektra said, jerking her thumb in Matt’s direction.

Karen slapped her forehead. “Oh, right. Obviously.”

Elektra didn’t know how true that really was after what Matt had told her about his others senses. Maybe it didn’t matter at all. But for as long as she’d known him, he had always liked his things kept just so - whether that was really out of necessity or just personal preference, she didn’t think he’d appreciate them switching it up on him now.

They eventually settled on the other corner near the front of the office - the door might bump into the tree if it was opened too wide, but it was the only space big enough to accommodate even a smaller tree.

“Where’d you get these ornaments?” Karen asked, opening a box.

“Oh, they’re from Japan.” Elektra pulled out one that looked like a little geisha. “Aren’t they cute?”

As Karen trimmed the tree, Elektra hung garland and bows around the window and the back wall. It probably should have been the other way around, since Karen was several inches taller, but she seemed to enjoy looking through all the ornaments, and that might bring back some memories that Elektra didn’t want to deal with right now. To distract herself, Elektra told Karen stories of Christmas in Japan: how fried chicken from KFC was a Christmas dinner staple and how most Japanese children thought the twenty-fifth of December was Santa’s birthday.

“Christmas Eve is basically like Valentine’s Day,” Elektra went on, standing on her toes (and in heels) atop the filing cabinet to tape some garland to the ceiling.

“Valentine’s?” Karen asked.

“It’s supposed to be a night for romance - dates, gifts, love confessions,” Elektra said. “Don’t ask me why.”

“Love confessions?” Matt said. Elektra rolled her eyes. Of course they were still eavesdropping. “Did you hear that Foggy?”

“That’s nice,” Foggy said, a little too nonchalantly. Elektra turned around and saw him staring very intently and very deliberately at his laptop screen.

“Was the original Christmas Eve romantic?” Karen touched the corner of her mouth. “I can’t decide.”

“Giving birth in a barn?” Elektra scoffed. “Uh, _no_.”

“True, but-”

“Hey.” Foggy suddenly looked up, his blushing cheeks gone stark white. “They’re announcing the verdict. Fisk’s verdict.” Poor Karen went so pale that you would have thought Fisk himself had come through the office door.

“Right now?” Matt asked.

Elektra hopped off the filing cabinet and she and Karen went into the conference room, where Foggy positioned his computer at the back of the table so everyone could see it.

“It’s live,” he said, hitting the volume button until the speakers were turned up all the way. Elektra noticed his fingers shaking over the keyboard.

The live feed featured a female reporter standing in front of the courthouse. “We’ve received word that after three days of deliberation, the jury has reached a verdict in the trial of Wilson Fisk.” The reporter then went on to reiterate the charges against Fisk and went through the trial highlights. The only charge Fisk had plead guilty to resisting arrest, and a judge had already sentenced him to time served for that.

Elektra stood alongside Matt’s chair and squeezed his shoulder, even though she knew they were hoping for different outcomes. _You’re a selfish, selfish bitch_.

The reporter suddenly fiddled with her earpiece. “I’m getting word now that the verdict has been delivered. The jury has found Wilson Fisk _not guilty_ on all counts. I repeat, the verdict is not guilty on all counts.”

A stunned silence filled the conference room, thick and suffocating like a gas cloud.

Foggy was the first to speak. “Unbelievable. _Unbelievable_.” He then launched into a tirade of such filthy, vulgar language that Elektra had to admit she was impressed.

 _I’m going to fucking kill you, you bald bastard_ , Elektra thought. She had to contain her own feelings of relief, which was easy to do when she saw how devastated the others were. Karen burst into tears, covering her face with her hands, which seemed to snap Foggy out of his profanity-laden diatribe.

“Karen, don’t...it’s…” he trailed off into a sigh, his arms hovering awkwardly above her shuddering shoulders.

Matt had gone so still and so silent that he became like a statue, but Elektra could feel the fury roiling beneath the surface of his skin. He shrugged her hand away and stumbled out of the room, only narrowly avoiding running into the door frame.

Elektra followed after him and grabbed his arm. “Matt. _Matt_?” She was worried he was going to do something really stupid, like try to go after Fisk tonight.

When they were in his office, she shut the door, even though she knew Foggy could still see them through the window. A violent storm of braille pages suddenly filled the space, fluttering to the floor as Matt threw another folder at the opposite wall. Elektra managed to snatch his laptop as it flew across the room next, before it smashed into a million pieces on the floor.

“I tried...the law, I thought…” Matt wrapped his arms around himself. “I thought if I turned him in, he would be punished, the law, it would work, would take its course, I... _Did I have it all wrong_?”

“Matt.” Elektra put his computer down (and out of his reach), put her arms around him, pushed his head onto her chest. He put his arms around her back and clung to her, and she cradled him like a child. “This isn’t on you.”

“It’s all on me,” he said, his voice quivering.

“No, it isn’t, Matt. I told you before: you don’t have to do this alone.” Elektra hoped her words weren’t too far away to reach him.

“If I had...If I had killed him in that alley, your dad would still be alive. It’s m-my fault...my fault he died, Elektra. Mine.”

“Oh, Matt…” _Have you been carrying that around all this time_? She gently grabbed his chin and eased him upright, until they were standing face to face. His cheeks were wet.

“All those people, your dad...I could have stopped it. I could have stopped him, but I…”

“Matt.” Elektra put his hand on her face. She didn’t know if he was listening to her heartbeat right now, or had some other indication that she was being sincere, but she needed him to _see_ her, to know that she meant everything she was about to say. 

“None of this is your fault, Matt,” Elektra said firmly. “ _None of it_. It was Fisk’s. And we are going to make him pay for it. For everything.”

Matt put his arms around her neck and sobbed into her shoulder. Elektra had never, ever seen him cry - not when he talked about his dad or losing his sight, not when she broke up with him. _This isn’t just about Fisk_ , she thought. _It never was_. She looked through the office window and saw a weeping Karen slumped against the conference room wall, and a miserable-looking Foggy desperately trying to console her.

“If the system doesn’t work, then what...what the hell am I doing?” Matt whispered, gripping her back. “What the hell am I?”

“The failsafe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I worry that Wilson Fisk's acquittal seems too unrealistic, I remind myself of OJ Simpson and of the time a jury ruled that Robert Durst dismembered a guy in self-defense.
> 
> Anyway, I hope I set up this verdict enough that you're not sitting there scratching your head. Obviously, Fisk needed to be set loose for the story to continue in any sort of interesting way, and a jailbreak seemed even less realistic (and frankly, less horrifying) than everyone's favorite bald guy once again playing the justice system like his personal violin.


	22. Chapter 22

The room was wide and dark and empty, except for a single wooden booth where Matt sat across from his dad.

“You have your father’s hands.”

Matt looked down and saw the big, square hands of a grown man, not a child. Knuckles bloody and raw. _I can see_ , he thought.

“You knew I didn’t want you to fight, Matty. I wanted you to make something of yourself, not like me.”

Matt looked back up at his father, only a handful of years older than Matt was now. “I’m a lawyer,” he said.

“That’s just the mask you wear.” His father spread his own bloody fingers on the table.

“I’m trying to help people,” Matt said.

“No, you’re not, kid. You’re trying to help yourself.” It wasn’t his father sitting across from him, but a wrinkled old man in dark sunglasses. _Stick_. Matt didn’t know if this was how the man really looked or if it was just his mind filling in the details. “The only person you’re trying to help is a nine year old kid who couldn’t save his father.”

“He did it for me,” Matt said. "I just wanted him to come home."

“You can’t save anyone.” Stick turned his head and Matt followed it.

Ankle deep snow surrounded the table. Footprints and drops of bright red blood marred the pristine white surface, receding into the darkness. Matt got up and followed trail. He saw a dark-haired woman in the distance, wearing heels and a short dress. She stumbled in the snow, labored back to her feet and took a few more halting steps before toppling over again, leaving more of the blood trail behind. On hands and knees, she began to crawl. Matt quickly caught up with her.

“Elektra.” She ignored him, dragging herself through the bloody snow with shallow, gasping breaths. When Matt grabbed her, she collapsed in his arms.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she whispered. One of her knives was sticking out of the center of her chest, plunged down to the hilt. “I can’t, Matt...I’m sorry.”

“Elektra,” he said. “Don’t do this. Please.”

“I have to go.” She closed her eyes. Matt couldn’t hear her heartbeat.

A massive, black shape covered the snow white ground in front of him. A shadow. Matt hadn’t seen one in so long that he had almost forgotten what it was.

“This city deserves men like you,” it said. Matt couldn’t see him, couldn’t sense him at all, but he knew that voice. It belonged to Wilson Fisk.

“We used to be the same,” Fisk said. “Men so convinced of our own rectitude that any who stood in our way had to be wrong. But there is no such thing as right or wrong. There’s only power.”

“We’re nothing alike,” Matt snarled, cradling Elektra’s lifeless body to his chest. It was as cold as the snow surrounding him.

“You cling to ghosts in an attempt to convince yourself that you’re somebody, just like everyone else. I was like that once too. But men like you and me, we’re not like everyone else.”

“I will never be like you!” Matt shouted at the shadow that grew larger with every word, until it covered him completely.

“You already are. This city has bled for your pride. You think you’re their savior, but they fear you. Despise you. Given half a chance, they would tear you apart. Just look at you. Look at your hands. When you get into the pit with monsters, you know what you have to become to survive.”

 

\----------

 

Matt awoke to snow gently lapping at his windowsill and the familiar comfort of all-encompassing darkness. He couldn’t see anymore. That was how he knew it was a dream. If only the rest of the day had been one too.

Matt thought he had been prepared for Fisk’s verdict. He thought he could handle it. But those two words - _not guilty_ \- hit him harder than the bullets he had taken to the chest weeks ago. It was like he couldn’t breathe. _This isn’t happening_ , he told himself. _This isn’t happening_. The blackness was devouring him, swallowing him whole.

Elektra laid sleeping alongside him. He pulled her close until she was nearly on top of him, feeling the warmth of her body, the gentle rise and fall of her chest, the softness of her hair falling around his shoulders and between her fingers. _You can’t save anyone_. What sort of man couldn’t even protect the woman he loved?

 _You’re not a man - you’re still just a kid_. It seemed Stick’s voice was not content with lingering merely in Matt’s subconscious. He wondered just what the old man would do if he were in the same situation; surely he wouldn’t lie around feeling guilty for his failure. But then, it wasn’t possible to feel guilt when you didn’t have anyone in your life to care about, to protect or mourn. Even as much as this hurt right now, Matt knew it was still better than being alone.

 

\----------

 

Elektra spent the next few days at Matt’s apartment under the pretense that she was “snowed in” (even as a line of taxis trundled down the street), but Matt knew she was really hanging around to keep him from going out and doing something stupid. It was pretty bad when Elektra Natchios was worried about you being reckless and impulsive.

She mostly left him alone, though, to contemplate the justice system and his role within it. The official transcripts of Fisk's trial were not yet online, but Matt pored over every article, every report, every post and tweet, desperate to find some sort of red flag, some obvious blunder by the prosecution that he could point to and say, _this is where it all went wrong_. It was easy to think of an individual as fallible, but when you started to think of the entire system as flawed, suddenly everything started to twist on its axis and before you knew it, the world was upside down.

But Matt could find no such simple fault with the trial. A lack of hard evidence made the prosecution’s case weak, and it was further weakened by the death of the star witness, Carl Hoffman. The defense had cast aspersions on everyone _but_ Wilson Fisk and played up his rags-to-riches story for sympathy.

 _Think like a juror_ , Matt told himself, _and not someone who nearly had his skull bashed in by the defendant_. And the jury could only consider the evidence at hand, not what they’d seen on the news and overheard while waiting in line for coffee. In law school, he had analyzed other such cases with exactly that sort of detachment, and the point had been made that the jury had come to the right conclusion based on the facts as presented, even if it was entirely wrong from the truth.

But in the case of Wilson Fisk, Matt had been too close to the truth and too desperate for justice - or maybe, just maybe, _revenge_ \- to think about it like a lawyer, to question Fisk’s culpability in the eyes of the law. And now he realized he had been running from it too; he needed the law to punish Fisk so he wouldn’t have to. So he wouldn’t have to start down that path, afraid of what he would become. _It’s time to stop running_ , he told himself. _Time to stop being afraid_.

“ _Foggy, Foggy_.” Matt closed his laptop and grabbed his phone.

“Hey, buddy,” Foggy said. “You still hanging in there?” After the Fisk verdict had been read, they had closed the office through the weekend; none of them were in any state to get any real work done.

“I haven’t put on the mask, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Matt knew that was exactly what Foggy was getting at. “I haven’t even left the house.”

“That’s good. Er, the part about the mask, I mean. Not the shut-in part.”

“Is Karen doing okay?” She hadn’t just broken down at Fisk’s verdict - she was downright terrified.

“Not great,” Foggy said. _She must still be afraid that Fisk is going to come after her like Ben_. “We should go out,” Foggy said abruptly. “Drink until we can’t feel feelings.”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“Nope,” Foggy said. “But good idea or not, I’m getting drunk tonight, and it’s slightly less pathetic if I’m out with my best friend and a couple of hot chicks.”

Matt sighed. He didn’t particularly feel like going anywhere, but he knew he couldn’t wallow forever. “We’ll meet you at Josie’s in half an hour.”

“We will?” Elektra asked as he hung up the phone.

“Uh, hopefully that’s okay with you? I know it’s not your favorite bar, but-”

“It’s fine, Matt. Just let me fix my hair.”

“I said half an hour,” Matt called after her as she went into the bathroom. He went into his bedroom and tried to make himself presentable.

When Elektra was ready, the two of them set off into the frosty New York City evening, several inches of filthy snow piled in the gutters and alleys and corners.

“Has anything happened with that guy at your work?” Matt asked. “Since Fisk...Fisk got out.”

“Matt, it’s only been, like, two days.”

“I know, I just…” It felt like it had been a month.

Elektra stopped them at an intersection and several trucks barreled through. “Slaughter’s around, but he’s got at least two guards on him all the time. Even outside the bathroom. Oh, let’s cross.”

Matt hadn’t heard the stoplight click over from green back to red as Elektra hurried them across the intersection and several cars honked at them to hurry up.

“I was trying to work the Board, but-” She sighed as she went on. “They’ve pretty much told me to go home and play with my makeup.”

Matt frowned. “You’re the majority shareholder. They can’t talk to you like that.”

“I _could_ fire them. But if I fired everyone who talked to me like that, there wouldn’t be any upper management left. I’d rather be known as a joke than the girl who ruined her father’s company.”

Maybe they deserved a visit from the man in the mask.

“Oh,” Elektra said as they entered Josie’s bar. “I guess we beat them here. That’s gotta be a first for me.” Matt hoped Foggy wasn’t having trouble getting Karen out of her apartment.

“Let’s grab a table in the back,” Matt said as he followed Elektra inside. Although it was still full of regulars, Josie’s was more crowded than usual. It had just been that kind of week for everyone in Hell’s Kitchen.

“Here.” Elektra chose the table furthest from the bar, where most of Josie’s patrons were hunched over their bottles and glasses. Matt shrugged off his coat and took the chair next to her, folding up his cane.

“Do you even really need that?” She asked. “If you’ve got the equivalent of sonar or whatever.”

“I have to concentrate,” Matt said. “Focus on it. Usually I have more important things to think about.” The smell of her perfume, how exactly her butt fit into those tight jeans, the musical sound of her laugh… “Like if I’m going to lose any of the brownie points I’ve managed to earn back by taking you to this place.”

“You’re doing alright so far, Murdock.” Elektra said. “So, you’re not just, like, hearing my heartbeat all the time?”

“No,” Matt said. “When my senses first started developing, before I could control it…it was awful, like being in a room with a hundred TVs blaring at once.” When Stick found him, he had barely been able to get out of bed without collapsing, overwhelmed by it all.

“Now...you pick which one you want to turn on,” Elektra ventured.

Matt nodded. “Something like that. Of course, I can’t actually tell what’s on TV.”

“No?”

“It’s a flat surface,” Matt said.

“Oh.” She leaned over him toward the bar. “Sports. Shitty, stupid sports.” In other words, the kind of sports that didn’t involve an engine. As far as he was concerned, even curling was better than news about Wilson Fisk.

Down the block, Matt heard Foggy’s boisterous voice and Karen’s shoes clicking on the concrete. “They’re here. In three, two, one...” The door to the bar banged open, buffeted by a blast of cold wind.

“You just said-”

“Now I’m just trying to impress you.”

Foggy and Karen took the two empty seats at their small table, and Matt realized that under much different circumstances (not the least of which was Foggy getting his head out of his ass), this could have been a nice little double date. Foggy was as talkative as ever, but there was an edge to his voice, an anger bubbling just below the surface. Karen’s misery was more apparent. She replied through clenched teeth when spoken to and sounded congested - not from a cold, Matt knew, but from crying. Every time Matt thought he couldn’t hate Fisk any more, the man somehow found yet another way to hurt someone he cared about.

Josie brought them their usual bottle of whiskey, and Elektra took a glass instead of ordering something else.

“I thought you hated this stuff,” Matt said after the bartender left.

“I don’t really think the glasses here are clean,” Elektra said quietly. “So it’s probably best to stick to the stuff that smells like disinfectant.”

“Come on,” Foggy said. “It’s just water spots. I mean, _probably_.”

Matt might have been able to settle the debate, but he liked Josie’s, and didn’t want to ruin the experience by figuring out exactly what was inside the glasses here. Instead he gulped down the liquor without paying any attention to the taste.

After a couple of rounds sipped in tense silence, Foggy slammed his glass down on the table. “You know what we need? A plan. Everyone always feels better when they have a plan.”

“A plan for what?” Elektra asked.

“A plan to get the bastard,” Foggy said. “To get him behind bars once and for all.”

“Because that worked so well last time,” Karen muttered.

“They didn’t even try him for half the shit he’s done,” Foggy said. “We can still get him.”

Matt poured himself another drink. “That’s because they didn’t have enough evidence.”

“Well,” Foggy said, taking the bottle from Matt. “There’s our goal, then. You really think the D.A. isn’t taking this one personally? I guarantee they’re out there right now, trying to find something they can make stick. I say we give them a hand.”

“Foggy, we could barely find anything on Fisk before,” Matt said. “And now he’s going to be even more careful to cover his tracks.”

“You’re right. _His_ tracks,” Foggy said. “But he has people working for him who might not be doing such a good job covering their own.”

“Another Carl Hoffman?” Karen asked, annoyed. “Have you forgotten everything that happened in the last three months?”

“On the contrary,” Foggy said cheerfully. “That’s _exactly_ what I’m thinking about. He hires a guy to kill Hoffman and, uh...well…”

“My dad,” Elektra said. “I’m not going to fall to pieces if you say it.”

“Sorry,” Foggy muttered. “He hires this guy to kill Hoffman and...Elektra’s dad. Then that guy goes and shoots up a public event and kills a bunch of random people? He only made it out because the cops screwed up. That’s not someone who’s covering his tracks very well. But crazy or not, the guy is some kind of professional hitman. He’s not going to be someone Fisk can just take out when he becomes a liability.”

Only Matt and Foggy knew the full circumstances behind that awful night at Fall Fest. Matt still considered his choice to take on the sniper incredibly foolish, but the gunman’s plan was every bit as reckless. And Matt also knew that this guy wanted to make some kind of public name for himself, which pretty much ran one hundred percent counter to Fisk’s priority of keeping all his illegal activity silent and buried. For the first time since the verdict was read, Matt could actually feel a little bit of hope flickering in his chest.

“Get the gunman arrested and get him to give up Fisk for his role in the murders,” Matt said, nodding. That had been his plan before, but now he knew better than to rely on the police to do any, well, police work. That meant it was up to the four of them.

“Turning Fisk and his allies against each other,” Elektra mused, toying with her glass. “I like it.”

“Why, thank you,” Foggy said proudly.

“But,” Elektra said. Matt could tell there had been a ‘ _but_ ’ coming. “It’s not foolproof. We’ve seen how well the cops handle, like, anything, and how Fisk and his lawyers manipulated the court.”

“Yeah, but-”

Elektra cut Foggy off. “There’s a simpler and more permanent solution.”

“No,” Foggy said. “No, absolutely not. We are not killing anybody.”

“I didn’t say ‘ _we_ ,’ did I? Fisk already has a reputation for killing his partners, right? They’ve got to know sooner or later their number is going to get called. So, if the hitman thinks Fisk is done with him, and Fisk thinks the hitman is going to squeal to the authorities…”

“Let them take each other out,” Matt said, finishing her thought.

“One of them gets killed, and the other one gets charged with the dead guy’s murder. And our hands are clean,” Elektra said.

“Clean?” Foggy asked, incredulous. “There’s nothing about having people killed that’s _clean_!”

Elektra made a frustrated sound deep in her throat. “Oh, please. Spare me the good guy routine. This is real life, Foggy. You have to make your own happy ending.”

“Matt?” Foggy implored. “You can’t be okay with this.”

Matt didn’t know how to feel about Elektra’s idea, but he did know there was no way in hell he’d ever choose between her and Foggy. Not unless he never wanted to hear the end of it.

“It seems to me that you’re both talking about the same thing, at least to start.” Matt chose his words carefully. “And there’s no point in arguing over what to do with information we don’t have yet.”

“I don’t care what happens to Fisk,” Karen said. “As long as he’s gone.” She shuddered. “I won’t feel safe until he’s gone.”

“Alright, so… this hitman,” Matt said. “I think it’s safe to assume someone had to pay him while Fisk was on the inside. I seriously doubt he works on credit.” Matt knew the man didn’t, since the gunman had mentioned being paid the first time they’d met face to face. “If we can get our hands on some kind of proof that Fisk’s people paid this guy large sums of money around the time of the murders, that’s solid evidence. For, uh, whatever we decide to do with it.” He could feel both Foggy and Elektra glaring at him.

“How do we go about finding something like that?” Karen asked.

“I don’t know,” Matt admitted. Even if they somehow managed to hack into Fisk’s bank account, nothing they found illegally would be admissible in court. The group refilled their glasses and drank in silence for a few moments, until Foggy suddenly dropped his glass onto the tabletop with a clatter.

“I...I think I might know who we could talk to - not that I think he’d talk to us.”

“Who?” Karen said.

“That scumbag lawyer, Larry Cranston. That girl I went out with from the D.A.’s office mentioned he was unofficially part of Fisk’s legal team.”

“‘Unofficially?’” Elektra asked. “Also, you went out with a girl? Like, a real live one?”

“Cranston represented Carl Hoffman,” Matt explained, hoping Foggy would ignore her jab. “The same lawyer suddenly representing Fisk would make Hoffman’s death even more suspicious than it already was. So he probably helped them build the case, but didn’t actually appear on any documents or in court.”

“And since we know Cranston would charge his own mother a consultation fee, you can bet he didn’t work pro bono for Wilson Fisk,” Foggy said. “Whoever paid him, from whatever account - it was probably the same person who paid the hitman.”

“Well then, it sounds like your friend in the mask should pay this lawyer a visit,” Elektra said. “Is there some kind of bat-signal we can light from the roof?”

Silently, internally, Matt groaned. He had always been more of a Superman fan, anyway. What was even worse than her joke was the fact that Foggy laughed at it.

Only Karen remained serious. “Daredevil must want to take Fisk down every bit as much as we do,” she said. _True_. “He’s the one we should give anything we find.” It was the first time she sounded anything near hopeful all night. _If only Daredevil was half as put together as you think_.

“Maybe he’ll come down your chimney with Santa Claus,” Foggy said, clearly annoyed. Matt felt bad about that. It had only ever been his intention to protect Karen, not to make her idolize him.  

“If Cranston’s really as greedy as you say, I shouldn’t have a problem softening him up,” Elektra said. “As much as I’d prefer anyone who helped Fisk get his ass kicked. Do you have a problem with bribes too, Saint Nelson?”

“Oh, come on,” Foggy muttered. “No. As long as it’s not my money, I don’t really care.” _If we used your money, we’d run out pretty fast_. Matt kept that thought to himself.

“Good,” Elektra said. “Everyone has a price.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dream sequence at the start of this chapter is shamelessly stolen from Season 2 of True Detective - at least the initial setup with the hero sitting across from his father in a booth. The line of "you have your father's hands" just worked SO well for Matt Murdock (honestly, better than Velcoro in True Detective) that I had to use it, and kind of did my own thing from there. Feel free to imagine Conway Twitty playing in the background.
> 
> Also, for all the references to Batman - first of all, I freaking LOVE Batman. Second, I imagine in the MCU all Marvel superheroes and characters are real people, of course, but DC comics and characters remain fictional entertainment.


	23. Chapter 23

Elektra accompanied Matt down to the fifteenth precinct in her fur coat and a pair of extremely loud heels (evidently clogs were in this season; he had no idea). He sensed more than one head turning her way as they walked.

The precinct was quiet, save Elektra’s echoing shoes and a few scattered conversations between cops. The place had a somber, gloomy air - the kind you would expect right after a funeral; it was the shroud of defeat. Matt had been monitoring the police scanner all day and, for once, things were fairly quiet in Hell’s Kitchen. He wondered if that had anything to do with Fisk being back on the streets, but there would be time to contemplate that later, when he wasn’t playing a part.

He recognized Brett was on duty before the man spoke. “Murdock.” Instead of his usual harried tone, the officer sounded curious - and vaguely alarmed. At Matt’s choice of companion, no doubt.

Matt tried to look a little chagrined. “I’m trying to prove to my girlfriend here that my job isn't nearly as glamorous as they make it look on TV.” He knew he sounded smug when he said the word ‘girlfriend.’ That part was not acting.

“Well,” Brett said slowly. “By the looks of it, it’s still more glamorous than mine.”

“Sergeant Brett Mahoney, this is Elektra Natchios.”

“Natchios…” Brett murmured under his breath. A bunch of bracelets Elektra was wearing jingled when she shook his hand.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said brightly, with none of the apathy that usually tinted her voice.

“Oh.” Matt made a show of checking his watch and then his pockets. “Shit. I was supposed to call Foggy before he left the office. I must have left my phone at home.”

Elektra laughed and rooted through her purse. “I’ll call him for you - oh.” Her nails clicked on the phone's screen. “My battery died again.”

Matt turned toward the desk. “Brett, I hate to ask, but it is kind of important…”

Brett sighed. “God dammit, Murdock. Make it quick.” He grabbed the landline and spun it around, pushing it towards Matt.

“Thanks, man. I owe you.”

“Yes. You do,” Brett said. “It’s nine to dial out.”

As Matt felt around for the receiver and ran his fingers over the buttons, Elektra said, “Do you mind giving me a quick tour, Sergeant? I mean, if you’re not too busy.”

Again, Brett sighed and then acquiesced. As he and Elektra headed toward the interrogation room, Matt punched in the number he had memorized earlier.

When it began to ring, Matt heard Elektra say, “I bet you work out a lot. You must have to keep in really good shape to chase down all the bad guys.” _Okay Elektra, that’s a bit much_.

An impatient sounding man came on the other line. “The law offices of Lawrence Cranston. How can I help you?”

Matt knew Manhattan PD must be displaying on the caller ID on the other end of the line. “This is Sergeant Brett Mahoney with the fifteenth precinct.” He rattled off the same spiel they always got when a suspect requested representation from Nelson and Murdock by name (which had happened exactly three times so far in his career).

“What was the name again?” the assistant said.

“Turk Barrett.”

There was some typing and then the assistant said, “I don’t see Mr. Barrett listed in our records.”

“He said he saw the billboard.” Foggy hated that billboard.

“Well, unfortunately Mr. Cranston is out of the office until the New Year. He’s not taking on any new clients.”

 _Damn_. “That’s quite a vacation. Is he out of town?” Matt knew he was pushing it, but it was worth a shot. Cranston was the best lead they had on Fisk right now.

“He’s not taking on any new clients,” the other man repeated, then hung up.

 _Well, shit_ , Matt thought. So much for their plan to lure Cranston out from the safety of his home or office and intercept him on the way to the precinct. Matt had to wait several more minutes before Elektra and Brett returned from their ‘tour.’

“Did you get him?” she asked.

“He’d already left for the day. Thanks anyway, Brett.”

“Yeah...good luck with that,” Brett said as Matt grabbed Elektra’s arm. He was pretty sure the officer wasn't talking about getting in touch with Foggy.

“He was nice,” Elektra said as they exited the building.

“He’s married,” Matt said, a bit _too_ matter-of-factly. Elektra laughed at him almost the entire way home.

 

\----------

 

“Do you really think he’s out of town?” Elektra asked. She pulled out her laptop and laid down on Matt’s couch.

“I don’t know. His secretary said he wasn’t taking on _new_ clients, specifically. If he’s still seeing old clients, he might still be around.”

“Hmm.” Elektra typed Cranston’s name into Google and was bombarded with a bunch of paid advertisements for his law firm, each catering to a different clientele: medical malpractice, workman’s comp, criminal defense. Each ad was shepherded by a man with slicked-back hair and white, leporine teeth.

“Wow. These are hideous. His web advertisements actually blink,” Elektra said. She pulled her feet up as Matt came to sit down next to her. “Do you guys put your faces all over your ads too?”

“We’re still working on the advertisements part.”

“Well, if you have to use somebody’s face, use Karen’s.”

Matt laughed. “She definitely is the best looking out of the three of us, and I don’t even know what any of us look like.”

“Yes you do.” Elektra looked up from her computer. “I mean, you can tell that, right? By, like, air currents or whatever.”

“Eh. Sort of. Like…a rough outline before the details are filled in. It’s definitely not the same.”

“Oh.” Elektra didn’t like feeling sorry for Matt, because she knew pity was the last thing he wanted from anyone. But it was times like these when she realized exactly the sort of things he was missing out on, and that really got to her. Worst of all, she couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“After you told me about your senses, I thought that meant maybe you really knew what I look like.” Hoped was a more accurate word. Her looks were the best thing she had going for her, after all.

“Well, I think I have a pretty good idea. I’ve, um, _interacted_ with your face a lot.”

That elicited a giggle from her. What a Catholic way to put it. “The first time you touched my face, I was so nervous.”

Matt smiled. “I know. It was cute.”

“‘Cute,’” she scoffed, poking him with her foot. “I’m glad you find my distress so attractive.”

“Okay, you want to talk about nervous? That was nothing compared to how I felt the first time I met your dad. I thought I was going to die of a heart attack at nineteen.”

“‘Nice boy,’” Elektra said in a deep voice, imitating her father’s thick accent. “‘Good manners. Maybe he can teach you sometime. He should take you on date to the library.’”

Matt laughed. “Not if I ever wanted you to talk to me again.”

Elektra smiled, but then it faded. Reminiscence was a dangerous game. She could spend her whole life living in the past. She tabbed over to a couple of address lookup sites and typed in Cranston’s name. There were several pages of addresses for the state of New York alone. It wasn’t a terribly uncommon name.

She read out the first address in downtown Manhattan. “Do you think that’s where Cranston lives?”

“I think that’s his office,” Matt said.

“There’s a bunch of other addresses here,” Elektra said.

Matt put his hand on her knee, toyed with the fabric of her pants. “You know, he’s going to lose his current clients if he’s really gone for an entire month.”

“He might lose his head if he stays in town,” Elektra said. “We know what Fisk does with people when he’s done with them.”

“In this case, I think greed trumps self-preservation.”

“So, we could still catch him on his way to or from work?”

“Maybe. But so could Fisk,” Matt said. “If Cranston was hiding out somewhere though, he could give that address out on a need-to-know basis - keep working, but keep relatively safe from Fisk.”

“In other words,” Elektra said. “We need to come up with another way to trick his secretary. That should probably be you.”

“Me?” Matt asked. “Why?”

“Because you’re a shameless flirt,” she said, prodding him with her toes.

“Cranston’s secretary is a guy.”

 _So you don’t deny it_. “Is he straight?”

Matt held up his hands. “How in the hell should I know?”

“So you want me to do it again.”

“Hey. I told you to _distract_ Brett, not flirt with him.”

Elektra smirked. “Is there a difference?”

Matt just laughed and shook his head.

Elektra put her laptop down and crawled onto Matt’s lap. “Were you jealous, Matty?”

His face flushed. “If I said I was?”

She put an arm around his neck and toyed with his hair. “Tonight was kind of exciting, I think.”

Matt swallowed. “Lying to the police excites you?”

“Not getting caught excites me,” she said in his ear. Matt’s hand drifted to her ass and gripped it firmly. “Hey, can you tell when I’m turned on?”

He nodded. From what was going on in his pants, Elektra could tell he was turned on too. “Then what are you waiting for?”

Matt grabbed her shoulders and pushed her down onto her back and kissed her hard on the mouth.

 

\----------

 

Elektra parked her car practically on the front doorstep of Cranston’s Manhattan office. There was a sign posted on the sidewalk nearby, although Matt couldn’t tell what it said.

“Are you allowed to park here?” he asked.

Elektra took the keys from the ignition and dropped them in his lap. “If someone comes by and complains, offer to move it.”

Matt just shook his head as Elektra left him to wait in the car and entered the revolving door of the office building. She had gone to rather elaborate measures to conceal her identity - purchasing a wig, wearing something she assured him was ‘ _passe_ ’ (Matt had no opinion on her outfit), and even affecting a thick Brooklyn accent. He wasn’t sure if she thought all this was really necessary, or just wanted to play James Bond; either way, he thought leaving him in her red Porsche double-parked in front of the office kind of spoiled the disguise.

After waiting far longer than he would have liked, Elektra finally returned. “You should have gone in,” she said as she took the keys back from him. “The secretary’s gay. Or at least, I wasn’t his type.”

“Then he’s obviously gay.” If you had a penis and liked women, then Elektra Natchios was your type. Matt wasn’t entirely disappointed to find that out. The less people she had to flirt with, the better.

“Still, I got an address,” Elektra said as she pulled out into the street.

“You got the address of where Cranston’s hiding?” Matt had to admit that he was impressed.

“Yup,” she said. “Turns out he _is_ taking new clients, so long as they’re wealthy women wanting to sue equally wealthy plastic surgeons.”

“Plastic surgeons?”

“I said I had a botched boob job. And do you know what that little fucker said? ‘I can tell.’ Can you believe that?”

“Uh, no,” Matt said. “I actually can’t.” _Definitely gay_. “What name did you give?”

“Some stupid girl I know. She’s dating an Osborn and her dad’s a Senator. And now she has an ‘appointment’ with Cranston next week. And _we_ have an appointment with him tonight.”

 _Tonight_. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Of course I want to do this.”

“Then I want to go over a few rules…” Matt said slowly.

“Rules?” He already knew Elektra wasn’t going to like anything that resembled ‘rules.’ “Why do you get to make the rules?”

“Because I’ve been doing this for a while.”

“Fine.” Elektra sighed. “And by fine, I mean I’ll listen - not that I’ll agree.”

“Okay, so...first thing: you need to wear a mask or something.”

“I am _not_ wearing devil horns,” Elektra said.

Matt laughed. “I don’t care what it looks like. Just that it conceals your identity. The people we’re going after...they aren’t playing around. The less they know about us the better.”

“Alright,” Elektra said.

“Along those same lines, we can’t use each other’s names.”

Elektra scoffed. “Obviously. Is there anything else?”

Matt had purposely saved the most contentious for last. “And...no guns.” Elektra just laughed at him. Matt held up a hand. “Just hear me out, okay? They’re too loud. They attract too much attention. And, you know, it’s really easy to accidentally kill someone.”

“It wouldn’t be an accident.” He wasn’t sure that he liked the way she said that.

“And then, about the knives…”

“Matt,” Elektra said. “I’m a one hundred and fifteen pound chick. Do you really think I’m going to be able to beat up a bunch of guys your size or bigger?”

“You gave me a pretty good bruise that one time.” And she had never apologized for it either.

“Matt, come on. I need something to level the playing field.”

“Well…” She was right, of course. Fisk was more than twice her size; no amount of martial arts prowess could fully compensate for that.

“No guns,” Matt said again. "No killing." The knives he was willing to concede. She obviously knew how to use them.


	24. Chapter 24

Elektra picked Matt up after nine, long after the sun had set (she had run late, of course).

“Is _that_ what you’re wearing?” she asked. Matt wondered if all women had a way of making him feel so instantly self-conscious, or if that was Elektra’s specialty.

“My suit’s still being repaired.” Matt was wearing his old black getup, the simple mask and escrima sticks in his back pocket. It was hardly bulletproof, but he wasn’t terribly concerned about bullets where they were going tonight.

“I like this a lot better,” Elektra said.

 _Of course you do_. “Not everything has to be a fashion statement.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Murdock.” Elektra turned on the radio and fiddled with the dial before putting her hand back on the gear shift. “Find us a good station. The address for this guy is practically out in the Hamptons, so it’s gonna be a long drive.”

She wasn’t wrong about that. Even once they cleared the Manhattan traffic and Elektra hit the Parkway at something much higher than the speed limit, it still took over an hour to reach their destination. Her father’s house wasn’t nearly so far, but the drive still brought back memories of a younger summer, when her laughs would go on and on and on; he might still be able to make her laugh now, but her mirth died too quickly, extinguished by grief and guilt and a hundred other things that would never quite go away. Matt felt them too, sometimes. And so he knew that she still would, long after Fisk was gone. But it didn’t mean they shouldn’t make him pay.

The GPS chirped. “ _Destination is point eight miles on the left_.”

Matt used the roar of the car’s engine, listening to how the sound traveled and echoed to get a sense of their surroundings. There was a good expanse of trees on either side of the road, tall and naked without their fall foliage, and very little else. From what he could tell, they only passed one other house along the road, more than a quarter of a mile from where Cranston was supposed to be hiding out. There were no other cars.

“This is how horror movies start,” Elektra said. Her heart told him she wasn’t scared; she was excited. “It’s dark as shit out here.”

“ _One quarter mile to your destination on the left_.”

“You should probably kill the headlights,” Matt said.

“Did you hear what I just said? There aren’t even any streetlights.” He knew she meant it too, because she was actually driving slowly.

“There aren’t any other cars either,” Matt said. “We don’t want him to see us coming.”

Elektra gave him an aggravated huff, then pulled her car to the side of the road, turning off both the headlights and the engine.

“Then I guess we’re walking, because I am _not_ crashing my damn car. That is _really_ how every horror movie starts.” _Maybe_ , he thought. _Except we’re the ones everyone should be afraid of_.

Matt hopped out of the passenger side and donned his old mask, pulling the cloth down past his nose. He started down the road when Elektra hissed at him.

“Matt!” Her loud whisper was slightly muffled by the cloth she had pulled over her mouth and nose. “Were you even listening to me? I can’t fucking see anything.”

“Sorry.” Sometimes he forgot just how much everyone else was at a disadvantage at night, especially out here, away from the ubiquitous glow of the city. Matt went back and grabbed Elektra by the hand, leading her down the road. _This is kind of nice for a change_ , he thought. He knew she would vehemently disagree.

The house at the address Elektra had gotten from Cranston’s secretary sat atop the crest of a hill; it was two-stories and of a size that a kid from Hell’s Kitchen would consider expansive, but Elektra probably thought it was a storage shed.

“Let’s go around the side,” Matt whispered to her at the base of the hill. They had to step carefully to avoid crunching dead grass and leaves underfoot.

“Upstairs lights are on,” Elektra said. “Somebody’s home.” _That somebody better be Cranston_.

Several hundred yards from the house, the pair of them crouched down on the lawn. Elektra took out a small pair of binoculars from her jacket pocket and surveyed the outside of the house, while Matt concentrated on figuring out what was going on inside.

“There’s an SUV in the driveway,” she said. “Old model. Jersey plates...probably _not_ Cranston’s car.”

Matt was only half listening to her. “There’s one person upstairs.” He was almost certain that person was Cranston. “Two in the back downstairs, and...one more….watching the door.” Their heartbeats were strong, steady, solid. “I think he’s hired bodyguards.”

“You can tell all that? Seriously?” There was a sound of awe in her voice that he liked very much.

“The bodyguard thing is just an educated guess,” Matt admitted. There was no high ground for Fisk to perch his sniper, which meant the guards would only have to be watchful for people coming in through the doors or first floor windows. People like the two of them.

“How do you want to do this?” Elektra asked.

“We need to take out the help first.”

“I’ll go front, you go back?” Before he had a chance to respond, she pulled down her mask to give him a quick peck on the cheek. “First one inside wins.” Elektra took off, leaving him - far from the first time - slightly bewildered.

But there wasn’t any time for that. Matt crept around the side of the building and pressed himself against the back of the house alongside a sliding glass door and listened. The two men were seated at a table inside; one complained about his ex-wife while the other knocked his knee against the table leg impatiently, rattling a couple of cups of cold coffee and a handgun. Cranston was upstairs and on the other side of the house, but if Matt didn’t want to alert him, he had to play this carefully.

He slapped the side of his hand against the glass door. Just once, to mimic a something more like a random sound than a proper knock. The two men inside paused, undoubtedly giving one another questioning looks, before the impatient one picked up his gun and came to investigate. The porch light buzzed to life, and several moments later, the lock on the glass door clicked and it slid open. The man popped his head and shoulders outside. Matt grabbed him by the collar and helped him out the rest of the way.

Matt tossed the man onto his back, knocking the wind out of him. While the guard struggled for breath, Matt kicked the gun from his hand, clipping a few fingers in the process. The guard’s buddy charged the doorway and Matt turned, tossing one of his sticks right into the man’s adam’s apple. It wasn’t enough to knock him out, but it did knock him down and out of the way.

Matt turned back to the first guard and pressed his heel into the man’s throat, cutting off his air supply. He clawed at Matt’s shins - which was actually quite painful through his ordinary cotton pants - but Matt ignored it, pressing his foot down even harder. The man inside the house wheezed and struggled to his feet. _Pass out already_ , Matt thought. But the man beneath him continued to gag and grasp.

The other man began to run toward the doorway, then staggered, stumbled, and crumpled to the ground. Elektra hopped over the prone form to Matt’s side, and stuck something small into the arm of the man on the ground. Too small to be a knife. A hypodermic needle.

“Where the hell did you get tranquilizers?” Matt asked as the man went completely limp beneath his foot.

“I know a lot of weirdos,” Elektra said matter-of-factly. Matt was pretty sure he was included in that list. “And besides, drugs are a much more reliable way of knocking someone out than bashing their head into the pavement, don’t you think?”

He dragged the other sleeping guard out onto the back patio, then followed her into the house, shutting the sliding door quietly behind them.

“I win,” Elektra.

“You only had one guy,” Matt said, following her to the front of the house. That particular guard was sprawled in the foyer, breathing deeply in a drug-induced sleep.

“You’ve been doing this for a while,” Elektra said mockingly.

Matt pointed up the stairs. “He’s still up there,” he whispered, listening to the quick thumping of Cranston’s heart. “But I think he knows something’s up.”

“Well, he won’t get very far,” Elektra said, tip-toeing up the steps. “I came in through the garage and found his BMW. I slashed his tires.”

Matt put a finger to his lips as they reached the upstairs landing, squeezing in front of her so that he was in the lead (and undoubtedly receiving a dirty look for that maneuver). There were three or four bedrooms off to either side of the hallway. Matt found himself briefly speculating whose house it really was - but if they were friends with Cranston, they probably deserved to have the place trashed.

Cranston was inside what seemed to be like an office or study, backed into the corner facing the door, anxious and alert. Matt pressed himself against the wall and motioned for Elektra to do the same. Their clothing wouldn’t stop a bullet, and Cranston was holding a gun.

Matt reached out and turned the door handle slowly, then pushed it open, revealing for Cranston what appeared to be an empty hallway. He wondered if Cranston was as superstitious as Elektra.

“Drop the gun,” Matt ordered from outside the room.

Cranston’s heart lurched, but then actually seemed to slow down. “I...Wait...is that _you_? The Daredevil guy?”

“Drop it,” Matt said again. He wasn’t sent by Fisk to kill him, but if Cranston thought he was getting off easy tonight, he had another thing coming.

“Alright, alright. I actually wanted to have a chat with you, anyway.” The gun made a small thump as Cranston placed it on the ground.

“Kick it here,” Matt said, and the other man complied. The firearm whizzed across the hardwood and into the doorway. Then Matt stepped through.

“Oh, I see you’re wearing your old clothes,” Cranston said. _Why the hell is he talking to me like we’re friends_? “I guess it would be awkward if you got pulled over wearing that red costume. And you brought...a _girlfriend_? Oh-kay…” Behind Matt, Elektra picked the gun up off the ground and inspected it.

“Who were you waiting for?” she asked. “Fisk?”

“I’ve learned he’s not terribly happy with the amount of knowledge I’ve gathered about him. For the trial, of course.”

“Psh.” Elektra ejected the clip and then pushed the bullets out of it one by one with her thumb. They rattled as they rolled across the floor. “Did you really think a twenty-two was going to stop Fisk? These are like BB’s to him.”

“I’m not a firearms expert,” Cranston admitted. “But, well, now that you’re here…” Cranston started to move for the desk, but Matt lunged forward, slamming the man against the wall. He was wearing a satin robe and - thankfully- loose fitting pants underneath.

“This isn’t a friendly visit,” Matt said.

“You...you said you wanted a clear path to Fisk, right?” Cranston stammered. He must have had all the teeth Matt knocked out replaced, but after tonight he might need to pay another visit to the dentist. “We can help each other.”

“What’s in the desk? Your info on Fisk?” Elektra asked, rifling through the drawers. It was at least twice the size of Matt’s desk at work. She pulled out something small that smelled strongly of tobacco and spice. A cigar.

“I guess your victory celebration was short-lived when you realized your client wanted to kill you. So...” She pulled her mask up just enough to expose her mouth, and bit off an end of the cigar and spat it on the floor. She lit it and sat down in the plush leather chair, putting her feet on the desk like some kind of creepy Hollywood executive. “The question is: are you stupid, or just delusional?”

“What?”

“About Fisk,” she said. “You must know about all the people he’s killed, if you have so much information on him.” Elektra blew out a little puff of smoke. “Did you really think _you_ ’d be safe?”

“I’m a lawyer,” Cranston said. “A public figure. Not some mobster.”

Cranston calling himself a lawyer was enough to make Matt’s blood boil. He slammed his fist into the man’s stomach. _What you are is an embarrassment to the legal profession_.

“What’s that for?” Cranston choked out, after a long groan. “I answered the question!”

Elektra, cigar still in her mouth, went back to rooting through the desk. She pulled out a large metallic box from the back of a bottom drawer. As soon as he saw it, Cranston’s breath hitched.

“Well, look what I found,” she said, flicking the latch. “Full of Benjamins.”

“Are you robbing me now?” Cranson asked, insolent. The pandering, pseudo-friendly tone had gone right out of him as soon as he felt his precious money threatened. Matt ignored the ridiculous question. _You have much bigger concerns than money right now_.

“Is that what Fisk paid you?” Matt demanded. “Is that all people’s lives are worth to you? A bunch of paper?”

“What people? Hoffman?” Cranston scoffed. “That guy was as crooked as they come. And you know what they do to ex-cops in prison. Killing him was a mercy.”

Matt grabbed Cranston by the silky lapels of his housecoat. “Is that how you justify it? Is that how you sleep at night?”

Cranston remained defiant, like the sight of cash had suddenly roused his inner strength. “You’re either with Fisk, or you’re dead. And I don’t have your talent for survival.”

“Coward!” Matt slammed Cranston’s back into the wall. “You know the law. You could have stopped all of this!”

“Do you really think prison would have stopped Fisk?” Cranston asked.

Elektra walked over and blew a tuft of cigar smoke into Cranston’s face. “You didn’t have to roll out the red carpet for him. Stop acting like you were a victim in all of this. People are _dead_. No one’s going to feel sorry for you stuck in your big house with all your money.”

“Come on,” Cranston said to them. “I’m a defense attorney. Fisk had the right to a fair trial. I was just doing my job.”

“‘ _Fair trial_?’” Matt was livid. He punched Cranston in the mouth and heard a crack. _There goes one of the teeth_. “Exactly what about murdering the star witness is ‘ _fair_?’”

“I told you,” Cranston whined, clutching his bloody lip. “Once Fisk asks you to do something, you can either do it and get paid, or it’s your head splattered all over the sidewalk.”

Elektra made a disgusted sound. “You’re pathetic.” She went back to the desk and returned with one of the thick wads of bills, and held the corner of it just above the tip of her cigar. Matt could sense the paper heating up; if it got any closer it would ignite.

“What are you…? No! Stop it!” Cranston screamed like she was holding one of his children to the flames. “I told you, I want to help!”

“So talk,” Matt said. Elektra pulled the money away from the heat, although he kind of wished she had let it burn.

“You said you wanted a path to Fisk. Well, I’ve got one for you,” Cranston said quickly. “He’s getting married this month.”

“ _Married_?” Elektra sounded as surprised as Matt felt. The last thing he had expected to discuss tonight was Fisk’s love life.

“Well, legally speaking he’s already married. The license was filed this week, so you’re too late to get to her. Wives can’t testify against their husbands, you know.”

Matt did know that, of course. But _‘get to her_?’ Wait…

“His fiancee was the one running everything while he was in lockup,” Matt said. He wasn’t quite sure why he was so taken aback. Maybe Vanessa had seemed too nice, too normal when Matt had met her. Maybe using the woman he loved had just seemed too low, even for Wilson Fisk.

“You just figured that out?” Cranston chuckled at him. “They’re having the ceremony two Sundays from now at the 49th Street church. It’s supposed to be a secret, but…” Matt could hear the smile in Cranston’s voice. _Disgusting_.

“What the fuck does this have to do with anything?” Elektra demanded.

“I’m saying Fisk will be at this place at this time.” Cranston’s condescending tone was grating. “That is, if you don’t have any qualms about assaulting him in church.” Matt did actually have a few qualms about that. If he was really lucky, Fisk would burst into flames as soon as he set foot on consecrated ground.

“So, there’s your path, Mr. and Mrs., um, Daredevil.”

“Oh my God," Elektra said. " ****Do _not_ call me that."

“That’s it?” Matt said. “That’s all you have?”

“Well, I…” Cranston cringed, waiting for a blow that didn’t come. “I mean, Fisk doesn’t go out in public a lot, especially now, so I think that’s a pretty good tip.”

“It’s not,” Elektra said. “I think I’m going to burn your money.”

“Wait! Wait! Just...just wait a minute, now. I... _dammit_ ,” Cranston cursed as he seemed to swallow words in his throat.

Matt got a better grip on Cranston’s collar and hoisted him a couple inches off the ground. “Talk.”

“Please, you don’t...the things I have...I _need_ it…”

Matt was about to hit him again when Elektra interrupted. “What the hell do you keep looking at?” She crossed the room and started examining a large frame hanging on the wall. Matt sensed it right away, as soon as the wall behind the painting vibrated. There was something thick and solid back there, something not part of the house’s construction.

“There’s a safe behind that,” Matt said to her. Elektra took the picture off the wall and started fiddling with the dial on the lock.

Cranston whimpered. “Come on. Please. _Please_. The things in there are all that’s standing between me and Fisk putting a bullet in my head.”

Suddenly, it all clicked. The money. Cranston’s almost immediate disappearance after Fisk was released from jail. Fisk seemingly wanting to murder him right away. “You’re blackmailing him, aren’t you?” Matt asked. The way Cranston’s heart skipped was all the confirmation he needed.

“It wasn’t...I mean, he’s a _bad_ guy, right? For the things he’s done, he deserves it. Who cares?”

“Wow,” Elektra said, looking up from the safe. “You’re even more despicable than I thought. In a weird way, that’s actually impressive.”

Matt put Cranston back on the floor, and released his grip on the quivering man. “You’re going to give us the combination to that safe. You can give it to us now, and keep all your money and the rest of your teeth. Or you can give it to us after I’ve broken every bone in your face. Your choice.”

Matt gave him a few moments to think it over, even though his fists were just begging to be used. Elektra continued to play around with the safe, probably looking for alternative ways to open it.

“Well?” Matt cracked a knuckle.

“What about that sniper, huh? Wilkins...no, Wilkerson! Wilkerson, although I’m pretty sure that’s a fake name. You must want him too, after what he did, shooting all those people, right? Right?”

Elektra’s head shot up. “What about him?”

“He’s stalling,” Matt said, but Cranston had unwittingly hit upon her weak spot.

Cranston turned toward Elektra. “I know things about him. He's ex-military. Black Ops. Nasty piece of work.”

“We figured that out already,” Matt said. “And that’s not what I asked you.” He whirled around, kicking Cranston square in the chest. Several ribs cracked and the man crumpled to the ground, wheezing.

“Please.” Cranston gasped, crawling around pathetically on the parquet. Crawling toward his money. “If I give it to you, I’m dead.”

This man had knowingly defended a murderer, manipulated evidence and witnesses to win. To get paid. This man used his client’s confessions to blackmail him, violating the sacred trust between attorney and client in the most selfish way. It didn’t matter if that client was Wilson Fisk or Charles Manson. It went against everything a lawyer stood for. Everything a lawyer was supposed to be.

Something inside of Matt snapped. He hauled Cranston off the floor by his shoulders and charged the nearest window. Matt shoved Cranston’s head through the pane and screen like his skull was a battering ram. Chunks of shattered glass scattered across the floor and bit into Matt’s forearms, but he was too angry to notice or care.

“If you don’t give me what’s in that safe, you’re dead,” Matt growled, forcing more of the man’s body over the jagged glass and out the window. “What is it?” Matt yelled. “The combination! Now!” Matt could tell Cranston was dazed from the impact, but he didn’t care.

“What’s the combination?” Matt shouted again. He inched Cranston’s body toward the ground, smelling blood as the man’s skin was raked over the broken glass. Cranston moaned.

Matt continued to demand the combination to the safe, pushing Cranston ever forward until the man was nearly hanging out the window down to the waist. Matt reached out with one hand and forced Cranston’s bleeding head down toward the ground. “ _Give me the combination_ ,” he hissed. The silk from Cranston’s robe caught and began to tear, causing Matt’s other hand to slip.

“Uh, okay. _Oh-kay_.” Elektra grabbed Matt’s arm. Her voice was quiet, her tone no longer playful. “I think you’ve made your point.” Matt wanted nothing more than to throw this piece of shit head-first to the ground. But they weren’t going to get anything from him if he was comatose.

He dragged Cranston back inside, leaving him in a heap of blood and glass. The man coughed and spat up a bunch of bloody phlegm through his split lips. Behind Matt, Elektra’s breathing had quickened, her heart pounding anxiously. She rushed over to the desk and the box of money, then knelt and smacked Cranston on the cheek.

“Hey. Hey! You see all this?” she asked. “This is enough money for you to buy a one-way ticket to fucking Timbuktu or wherever and be a gross lawyer there. Do you really think you can just wait Fisk out? He’ll never leave you alone as long as you have whatever’s in that safe. So man the fuck up, give us the combination, and get the hell out of the city.”

Matt could hardly believe it when Cranston pulled himself up to his feet and stumbled over to the safe, inputting the combination between ragged, shaky breaths. He shoved several large envelopes into Elektra’s hands before collapsing once more to the floor. She dumped the cash from the box all over Cranston’s crumpled form, put the cigar out on the hardwood, and Matt followed her out of the house.


	25. Chapter 25

Elektra spread the files from Cranston’s safe across Matt’s kitchen table, while he half-heartedly dabbed peroxide on the cuts on his forearms. At least he hadn’t bled all over her car upholstery this time.

One envelope contained a stack of photographs and the other two held documents of some kind, one set of which was recently printed, while the larger stack looked like photocopies of photocopies of old memos and typewritten documents, the ink grainy and faded, but still legible.

“What is it?” Matt asked impatiently.

“I’m not sure,” Elektra said, shuffling through the papers. “Reports, maybe? Some are dated from the late '80s or '90s, others are from a couple of years ago.” She randomly selected one of the older papers and started reading.

“ _During September 1991, source has furnished information indicating that the Rigoletto family is actively recruiting members and seeking to become influential within the “La Cosa Nostra” organization (a.k.a. the Mafia) in New York City. Source is in position to obtain and furnish information concerning Don Rigoletto’s movements and the plans of his organization._ ”

There were a bunch of signatures and stamps covering the margins.

“Rigoletto…?” The name tickled Elektra’s memory, but she couldn’t place it.

“He was the mob boss of Hell’s Kitchen for a long time,” Matt said. “Well before I was born. He went to prison back in the nineties, though.”

Elektra quickly scanned the other documents that had a similar format; many of them concerned Don Rigoletto, but there were other names too: Silvio Manfredi, Rufio Costa, the Karnelli brothers. Matt wasn’t as familiar with these men, but a quick Google search revealed they had all been active in organized crime in the late twentieth century, and all had been charged and done significant time in prison.

She shifted her focus over to the stack of newer papers. “It looks like some of these guys got out a couple years ago.” She flicked through the pages. “And then promptly went missing.”

“Missing?” Matt’s brow furrowed.

“Rufio Costa, reported missing December 2011. Joe Karnelli, missing April 2012. Rigoletto, missing September 2013.”

“Given their pasts, maybe they wanted to disappear. Make a fresh start.” Matt leaned his elbows on the table. Elektra pushed one of the folders aside to keep him from smearing his blood on it.

“Am I going to have to sew you up again?” Elektra sighed.

Matt shook his head. “Just hand me a couple of those butterfly band-aids.” Matt gestured at the first-aid kit on the seat next to her.

“Butterflies? Really? I thought you’d be more into Power Rangers.”

Matt laughed. “They’re the ones that are narrow in the middle and thick on both sides.”

Elektra retrieved the bandages from the kit and handed them over. “You don’t have to be ashamed about being in touch with your feminine side, Matt. A lot of girls are into that. I mean, _I’m_ not, but a lot of women are.”

Matt’s bemused smile turned to a grimace as he started to patch up his cuts. “Just tell me what’s in the photos.”

Elektra turned that folder toward herself, opened it, and gasped. She slammed it shut.

“What?” Matt jumped to his feet, sending the stack of butterfly band-aids soaring. “What is it?”

Elektra shook her head, fighting back nausea. “Something _dead_.”

“Something…?” Matt fingered the edge of the folder.

“You’re going to make me look, aren’t you?” _Blind asshole_. It was just her luck - he could hear conversations from down the street, but couldn’t tell what was on a bunch of gruesome photos two feet from his face.

At least he had the sense to look contrite. “I'm sorry. But if Cranston was using these photos to blackmail Fisk…”

She’d said she was willing to do anything to get the man who’d killed her father. Elektra took a deep breath and opened the folder once more.

“Ugh.” She let out a long whine. “It’s so _gross_.”

“Okay, that’s, um, not exactly helping me.”

“It looks like old shoe leather stretched over some little kid's sculpture of a foot,” she snapped. “And another foot. And a hand.” Even though there wasn’t anything to smell, she found herself breathing through her mouth.

“A dismembered body?” Matt was starting to look about a quarter as sick as she felt.

“In plastic bags. That the cops fished out of the river I guess. God, this is so creepy.”

“They’re police photos?” Matt asked.

“The have the little yellow number things in them. Or is that just what the cops use on TV?”

“Evidence markers,” Matt said. “Yeah, um…” he reached over for the report folders. “The numbers should be listed on the crime scene report, if it’s in here.”

Elektra quickly covered up the grisly photographs and gratefully went back to reading. “Huh, okay. Here’s the autopsy report on the, uh...body parts. Name is ‘John Doe.’”

“What’s the date?” Matt asked.

“December 2013. Let’s see…” Elektra scanned the report. “Caucasian male, aged 50-65. Cause of death undetermined. Oh, the limbs were cut off post-mortem. That’s nice.” She looked up at Matt. “What does any of this have to do with Fisk?”

Matt shrugged. “No idea. But Cranston wasn’t lying about using this to blackmail him.”

“What if he was lying to Fisk, though? Pretending like he had real dirt on him when it was just...whatever this is.”

Matt’s lip curled at the discussion of the other lawyer’s dubious morals. “That sounds like something Cranston would do. But even if they’re not a smoking gun, these files must be related to Fisk in some way.”

“So what can we do with all this?” Elektra asked, carefully arranging the papers and photos back into the respective envelopes with the photos on the bottom. “Anything?”

“There must be something we’re missing,” Matt said, sitting down. “I’ll take these into the office and go through them with Foggy.”

Elektra narrowed her eyes. “Are you saying Foggy Nelson is smarter than me?”

“I’m saying that reading autopsy reports and looking at pictures of dead people is sometimes part of his job.”

“Oh. Well,” Elektra pulled up a chair alongside Matt and sat down. “There’s still my suggestion. Speaking of Foggy, I know he wasn’t crazy about it,” _and I don’t care_ , “but you never said what you thought.”

Matt sighed, toying with the bloody towel he had used to clean his wounds. “I don’t know. I guess I was just hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”

Elektra watched him, frowning. It wasn’t like Matt to be indecisive, and it was even less like Matt to just sit around wishing for things sort themselves out.

“Can I tell you what I think?” she asked. Matt nodded, probably knowing she was going to whether he agreed or not. “You told me once that killing was the only thing separating you from Fisk. But tonight you just about threw a guy out a window. And that scared me.” In truth, it terrified her. Even when he was angry, Matt Murdock was always in control. Until tonight.

“I wasn’t actually going to throw him out. I knew what I was doing.”

Elektra didn’t believe him, but she knew that was an argument she’d never win. Instead, she said, “And did you know exactly how the glass was going to break when you shoved his head through it? That you weren’t going to slash an artery or his windpipe? It’s not just guns that accidentally kill people.”

Matt opened his mouth, closed it, then sat in silence for a few moments before speaking. “That guy’s an ass. Worse than ass. That he can call himself a lawyer is just…” Matt shook his head, but Elektra saw his fist clench tight around the bloody rag. “It’s not okay.”

“I know.” Elektra took his neck in her hand and placed his head on her shoulder. “I know. I’m not saying he doesn’t _deserve_ to be thrown out a window, but you...I won’t let you become someone you hate,” Elektra said, curling her fingers in his hair. “I won’t, Matt.”

 

\----------

 

Matt knew bringing the files from Cranston’s safe into the office wasn’t the best idea, not when Nelson and Murdock were drowning in paperwork and promises to get loved ones out of lockup in time for the holidays. But he also knew that Karen and Foggy were every bit as disheartened by Fisk’s acquittal as he was, and they wanted to help. And going through Cranston’s documents was the perfect way to keep his friends safe while they worked on the case.

Monday morning, he summoned Karen and Foggy to the office’s conference room after he laid the three folders on the table, taking extra care to make sure the file containing the photographs was closed.

“What’s this?” Karen asked as she entered the room. She was usually the one who procured and distributed the office files. Foggy was on her heels, chomping on a bagel. After what Elektra had said about the contents of the photographs, Matt thought it might not the best time for him to eat breakfast.

“Evidently Larry Cranston has been blackmailing Fisk,” Matt said.

“ _Whaaat_?” Foggy slid into a chair.

“How did you find that out?” Karen asked.

Matt had prepared a story ahead of time. It was more of a fib than a lie, really. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. “Elektra went to Cranston’s pretending to be a new client.”

“And that led to him telling her about the blackmail how?” Foggy said.

Matt shrugged. “The man loves his money.”

“Really?” Foggy said skeptically. “A bribe was all it took? She didn’t, say, shove a gun in his face?”

Matt groaned. Of course Foggy wouldn’t miss an opportunity to malign Elektra's morality. Besides, threatening Cranston’s life hadn’t proved a terribly effective method of extracting information.

“I don’t know, Foggy,” Matt snapped. “I didn’t ask a lot of questions. Does it really matter? This information-”

“Of course it matters,” Foggy said. “We go around hurting people - even people like Cranston - then we’re no better than Fisk.”

“Really?” Matt said. “Because you were the one who said he wanted to punch Cranston in the face.”

“Okay!” Karen put her mug of tea down on the table with more force than necessary. “So what is all this stuff?” One of her bracelets jingled as she reached for the small folio of photographs.

Matt gathered up all the folders, pretending like he had no idea he had practically snatched it out of her hands. “This is what Cranston was using against Fisk. Only, we couldn’t find any direct mention of Fisk anywhere in these files.”

“So maybe Cranston was just making stuff up,” Foggy said.

Matt shook his head. “I don’t think so. Evidently he caught an international flight the day after she weaseled all of this out of him.”

“So we have to dig a little deeper,” Karen said. She reached for the files in Matt’s hands; he gave her the two folders of documents, but handed the smaller set of photos to Foggy.

“Evidently those photos are-”

“Oh, God dammit,” Foggy muttered as he pulled one of the pictures out.

“- pretty disturbing,” Matt finished.

“What is it?” Karen asked. “More people Fisk’s killed?”

“I don’t know,” Matt said. “Like I said, Fisk wasn’t mentioned directly in any of the files. But there must be some connection we’re not seeing.”

“Alright.” Karen sounded determined. Hopeful. “Sounds like you had a lot more luck than we did.”

“Oh?” Matt kept his tone carefully neutral, but inside he was brimming with concern. He did _not_ want his friends sticking their necks out, not when it came to Fisk.

“We tried to track down anything on Fisk’s financials,” Foggy said. What was left of his bagel sat on the conference table, untouched. “Or any sort of connection with the gunman. Unfortunately, me and Karen don’t have millions of dollars to wave under anyone’s nose. Or a pistol to threaten them with.”

“Foggy-”

Karen made an exasperated noise. “I’ll get these documents scanned for you right away, Matt.”

After she left the conference room, Foggy said, “So, I’m stuck with the pictures of dead bodies?”

“Well, it’s you or Karen, Sir Galahad.”

“How did you really get this stuff?” Foggy asked in a hissed whisper.

“It was mostly how I said.”

“Except…?”

“Except for the part where I shoved Cranston's head out a window,” Matt said quickly. “You were right about his teeth being fake, by the way.”

Foggy placed his head on the table and groaned.

 

\----------

 

Two days later, Karen was practically sprinting out the door at quitting time. “I might have something,” she said, her voice breathless with excitement. “Meet you guys for drinks if I do?”

“Sure,” Matt said.

“What? No hot date with Elektra?” Foggy asked after Karen left.

Matt chose not to dignify that with a response, thinking back to the night they had tricked Brett Mahoney into letting them use precinct phone. He’d been hoping the night they broke into Cranston’s would end the same way, but apparently putting a guy’s head through a window killed the mood.

“Come on, Matt.” Foggy was leaning in his office doorway. “Please tell me you’re at least hitting that.”

“I thought you advised against the relationship, counselor,” Matt said as he put his laptop into his briefcase.

“Like you ever listen to me,” Foggy muttered as they put on their coats.

“You don’t have to live vicariously through my sex life,” Matt said as he followed him down the steps and out into the bracing December cold.

“Yes I do.” Foggy leaned over the curb, hailing a cab. “I absolutely do.”

“You _wouldn’t_ have to.” A cab trundled up alongside them, brakes screeching as it slowed to a halt. “If you got your head out of your ass.”

“What?” Foggy dropped his briefcase on the empty seat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Matt smiled and shut the door to Foggy’s taxi. “Talk to you later, buddy.” The driver pulled away before Foggy could get the window down to ask any more questions.

Matt caught a cab of his own, but gave the driver Elektra’s address instead of his apartment’s. Since Fisk had been released, too many dark, destructive things crossed his mind when he was left alone with his thoughts.

When the driver dropped him off in front of her building, Matt went to grab his phone to call her to let him in, but heard the doorman approaching him on the sidewalk.

“Good evening, sir. Are you here to visit Miss Natchios?”

“Yeah.” Matt felt strangely pleased with himself that Elektra’s doorman recognized him as a regular visitor. He let Matt in the building and showed him to the elevator, even though Matt was perfectly aware of where it was located (he’d realized long ago that it was usually easier to just let people think they were helping).

Elektra answered the door in a t-shirt and her underwear. Matt wondered if she would have put on pants for someone else. Like every other time he visited, she cleared shoes, shopping bags, and a bunch of other junk from the floor between the door and the couch.

“I hope you didn’t come over here expecting me to make dinner.”

Matt hung his coat on the back of a chair. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’d make an awful Stepford Wife.”

“Oh, I know.” Elektra sat down beside him on the couch. Matt put his hand on her bare thigh. He could feel that she’d shaved her legs just this morning, smell the lotion and traces of soap left on her skin.

“I can _order_ you dinner,” she said.

“Only if you promise to put on more clothes for the delivery guy.”

Elektra laughed. “You’re so cute when you get all territorial. Let me try to find some menus.”

Matt listened as she rooted through several drawers, wishing she’d bring her naked, smooth skin back within reach.

In the middle of her search, she suddenly stopped and muttered to herself. She grabbed something - an envelope, he thought - off the counter.

“Oh my God, I totally forgot, but I’ve got this thing I have to go to this weekend,” Elektra said.

“‘Thing?’ What sort of thing?” Matt asked.

“One of those stupid benefit things. I mean, the cause isn’t stupid, but the part where a bunch of rich people pretend like they care is.”

“You have to go? Also, it’s Wednesday.” He felt obligated to point that out.

“My dad always did, so I feel like I have to, I guess. I’ve got a plus one.” Elektra quickly added, “I don’t even want to go, but there’s an open bar. Top shelf.”

Matt gave her a wry smile. “Is that really your pitch?”

“Matt.” Elektra grabbed his arm. “Okay, I kind of want to go. But only with you.”

Matt smiled. “When you put it like that, I can’t exactly say no.”

“You’re right,” she said. “You can’t. Also, I’m going to need your help.”

“My help?”

“Eric Slaughter will be there too. We’re going to take him down.”

“You... want me to bring the suit?” That kind of put a damper on the invitation.

“And change in a phone booth? No.” Elektra snorted. “I need your ears.”

Matt cocked a grin. “Is that the only part of me you need?”

“To deal with Eric Slaughter? Jesus, I hope so. After that? We’ll see.” She fiddled with his tie in a way that started to make his collar feel too tight, before suddenly bounding off the couch and back into the kitchen. _Oh, come on_.

Karen called about a half hour after they finished dinner (and other things). She sounded breathless, excited.

“Can you meet me around eight?” she asked.

“Sure,” Matt said, checking his watch. Seven twenty p.m. “Josie’s?”

Elektra poked his arm. “Can’t we go somewhere else? I don’t want to drink with bikers.”

“Karen, hang on a sec.” Matt covered the receiver with his hand. “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know.” She thought about it for a second. “Saint Mark’s?”

“Saint Mark’s?” Matt frowned. “You’d really rather drink with NYU students than bikers?”

“You want me and Foggy to get along better, right?” He hadn’t explicitly said that, but it was true. Their constant bickering stressed him out. “Columbia superiority is something we can both agree on.”

Matt handed her the phone; he’d let the women work it out. He’d been with enough women to know that was always the right choice.

Karen didn’t have any objections to trying somewhere new. Matt knew she humored them by drinking at the same dive every week, never straying too far from their own little corner of the city. Between trying to get his legal practice off the ground and trying to keep the mask from ending up six feet underground, he knew he hadn’t been the most reliable friend - Foggy had no qualms about letting him know that, but Karen was too polite to call him on most of his bullshit. It was good to get her out somewhere new.

Matt and Elektra took a cab across town, briefly argued over who was going to pay the driver, then compromised that she would pay for their transportation and he would get their drinks.

As they stepped out on the sidewalk, Matt heard an electronic shutter sound and giggling as a group of people snapped photos along the street. They smelled like beer.

“There’s your NYU kids.” Elektra leaned into him, sounding wistful. “They really have no clue.”

“No clue about what?”

“About how shitty being an adult is.” She turned them toward a building before he could think of what to say to that. “Here.”

The place wasn’t any bigger than Josie’s, but it was three times as crowded. Most of the patrons weren’t speaking English, including Elektra, who said something to the host in Japanese.

“A Japanese bar?” Matt asked as he followed her to a little table in the back.

“Karen said she didn’t want to be overheard.”

Foggy arrived before Karen did, and was promptly escorted to their table by one of the wait staff; Matt suspected they were the only Westerners in the place.

“You really prefer _this_ over Josie’s?” he asked as he sat down.

“Well, my elbows don’t stick to the table,” Elektra said. “So, yeah.” His shoes hadn’t stuck to the floor either.

“I can’t read this menu,” Foggy declared. “It’s all written in...Asian.”

“‘In Asian’?” Elektra repeated. “Are you serious right now?”

“What?” Foggy said, feigning innocence. “I can’t afford to fly all around the world and learn all these languages.”

“Just point to the pictures of what you want,” Elektra said. “You know, like a five year-old. That shouldn’t be hard for you.”

 _Christ, these two_ , Matt thought. “Could someone please tell me what’s on the menu?” he asked, trying to break up their little squabble, at least for the next five minutes before they resumed in earnest.

“Of course.” Elektra started rattling off a bunch of Japanese words, presumably alcohol, that he’d never heard before.

“You can get a frog,” Foggy said. “That _is_ a frog, isn’t it?” He pointed to something on the menu.

“He is not getting a frog,” Elektra said flatly.

“Wait, do you mean to eat? Or a live one…?”

“To eat,” Foggy said. “But who knows? They might bring it out live. I can’t tell because I can’t read the damn menu.”

“Oh my God,” Elektra muttered. She summoned a waiter and said something to him in Japanese.

“I can never read the menu,” Matt said.

“Yeah, but she would never let you order something creepy,” Foggy said. _That really depends on how she’s feeling about me that day_ , Matt thought.

The waiter returned and exchanged menus with Foggy. “There you go, princess _Franklin_ ,” Elektra said. “English. Sort of.”

Instead of deciding what he wanted to order, Foggy read all the menu descriptions in broken English aloud, chuckling to himself.

Karen arrived just in time to save Matt from any more of their petty arguing. “This is neat,” she said as she took off her coat. He heard Foggy sigh.

“You guys want beer or the hard stuff?” Elektra asked.

“Better go with just beer,” Matt said. “We have to meet with a client in the morning.”

“And his very obnoxious wife,” Foggy lamented.

“Foggy!” Karen said.

“What?” Foggy said. “Come on, you were both thinking it.” They were - or Matt was, at least. Still, probably not something they should be saying about their clients in public.

Elektra ordered their drinks when the waiter came, and then Foggy ordered a bunch of food by pointing to it on the menu.

“Did you not have dinner?” Matt asked.

“I did,” he admitted. “But some of this stuff looks pretty good. Aside from the frog. I didn’t order the frog, did I?”

“You ordered like three kinds of dumplings and fried rice,” Elektra said. “In other words, the whitest food possible.”

“Oh, good.”

Matt was about to ask Karen what she found when the waiter returned with a pitcher of beer and four glasses. Elektra’s favorite Japanese beer was okay, he thought, but he still liked the heavier German lagers better.

“So, what have you got for us, our fearless-but-always-fashionable detective?” Foggy wasn’t being sarcastic, and Matt could feel the heat forming on Karen’s cheeks at the praise.

“Well, I’ve been going to see Mrs. Urich, Ben’s wife…” Karen began.

“Ben?” Elektra asked. “Who’s Ben?”

“A journalist. A good one,” Matt added, knowing Elektra’s feelings on the profession in general. “He broke the stories about Fisk and his partners last year.”

“He was a friend, too.” Karen’s voice suddenly grew thick. “And Fisk killed him for digging too deep.”

Elektra sighed. “One more reason to bring him down. For good.”

“What about Mrs. Urich?” Foggy asked.

Karen cleared her throat. “It took her a while, but she finally remembered Ben’s password. Fisk’s goons wiped his computer, but he backed everything up remotely.”

“Not a bad idea, considering the sort of people he wrote about,” Matt said, sipping his drink.

“Exactly,” Karen said. “All the mafiosos you got from Cranston - Ben wrote about them. He covered their trials.”

“So what’s the link to Fisk?” Foggy asked.

“You remember what he did to his father, right?” Karen said.

“He killed him,” Elektra said. “With a hammer.”

Matt could feel Karen and Foggy’s eyes on him. “I told her,” he said. “She needed to know exactly what sort of monster we’re dealing with.”

“That’s what Ben was looking into right before he...right before he died,” Karen said softly.

Matt nodded, remembering their last conversation with Ben Urich. “He said he needed better sources if he was going to write about it.”

“Right.” Karen pulled out her phone and began thumbing through the menus. “His dad was never declared dead. Never even reported missing.”

“Well yeah,” Foggy said. “His mom was in on it.”

“Wait, what?” Elektra’s head swiveled between Matt and Foggy.

“Evidently she helped him dispose of the body,” Matt said.

“Jesus Christ,” Elektra muttered.

“Look at this.” Karen tapped on her phone. Foggy and Elektra inclined their heads, and Matt tried to be patient. “Fisk’s dad ran for city council. Ben found his election poster in this old photo. Let me zoom in.” Karen’s nails dragged across the screen. “That’s his dad on the poster. Look at his watch. Now…” Her index finger flicked across the phone’s screen.

Foggy and Elektra recoiled in unison, making stereo exclamations of disgust. Karen didn’t seem to notice.

“That’s the same watch! On an arm that washed up in a plastic bag on the beach in 1982. Never identified.”

“You shouldn’t have pictures like that on your phone!” Foggy hissed.

“They couldn’t pull fingerprints?” Matt asked.

“Uh, well... _no_.” Karen bit her lip. “The, uh, skin sort of, uh...peeled off of the fingers.” It was one of those rare moments where Matt was relieved he couldn’t see.

“Can we please stop looking at this?” Foggy insisted.

Karen switched off her her phone. “It’s exactly like the bodies in Cranston’s files.”

“Fisk is hardly the first person to cut up bodies and dump them in the Hudson,” Matt said. He felt bad poking holes in Karen’s research, but he had to think about this objectively. Like a lawyer, and not like someone who was always willing to assume the worst when it came to Wilson Fisk.

“It backs up the story about his dad, though,” Elektra said.

“Not enough for an arrest,” Foggy said. “A matching watch isn’t the same as matching DNA. I’m sure tons of people had similar watches back in the day.”

Elektra snorted. “Okay, but _we_ know that’s got to be his dad. Exactly what sort of twisted shit does Fisk have to do to convince you that he deserves something more permanent than a jail cell?”

“That’s not our place to decide!” Foggy said. “Any of us.” Matt was certain that last statement was directed at him.

“How would you feel if he killed your father?” Elektra demanded. “If he killed Matt? Karen?” Fisk had come damn close in the last two cases.

“I get why you feel-”

“You don’t _get_ anything,” Elektra hissed. “You have no idea how I feel. And I really don’t give a shit if my ideas offend your rose-colored view of reality. Wake up, Foggy.”

Matt thought (and hoped) Foggy might back down, but he jumped right into the ring. “So where does it end then? Somebody steals your purse so you have the right to cut off his hands? _You_ need to wake up. You’re not the only person who’s ever been the victim of a crime. If everyone did what you want to, we’d still be living in Medieval times.”

“Foggy,” Matt said pointedly. “Can you show me where the men’s bathroom is?”

“You know where the bathroom is,” Foggy groused.

Karen gasped, pushing him out of his seat. “Foggy!” she hissed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Still grumbling to himself, Foggy grabbed Matt’s arm roughly and dragged him down a narrow corridor alongside the kitchen.

“Can you please give it a rest?” Matt whispered when he thought they were out of earshot.

“No, I cannot give it a rest,” Foggy whispered back. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that she keeps talking about killing someone and you put a guy’s head through a window?”

“She _stopped_ me, Foggy.”

“What?” Foggy’s grip faltered on Matt’s arm.

“She stopped me from throwing him out the window,” Matt said. If she hadn’t been there, could he really have stopped himself? He honestly didn’t know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Japanese restaurant/bar they go to in this chapter is inspired by Kenka, an awesome little joint in St. Marks. If you like Japanese street food and super cheap beer, I highly recommend it. And yes, you really can order a frog.


	26. Chapter 26

At the party that Saturday, Elektra drummed her nails on the stem of her champagne glass. She'd lost track of the number of the times the waiter had refilled it, but the lightness in her head told her it had been quite a few. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was getting Eric Slaughter alone.

She watched him as he sat at his table across the room, exchanging brief, strained pleasantries with anyone his socialite wife dragged over. She watched him pick at his food. Send his steak back because it was undercooked. Ignore the free and very prompt champagne service in favor of a glass of tap water. She was never going to be able to confront him if he didn't leave his damn seat.

Beside her, Matt asked the waiter for another glass of whiskey. Elektra felt terrible about dragging him along to this thing, even though he knew she had ulterior plans for the evening. Still, she knew he didn't get invited to these sort of parties often (or ever), and here he was, stuck in the corner, his date ignoring him to stare at an old man. At least he was taking advantage of the open bar.

Elektra pushed the guilt from her mind as Slaughter's wife greeted a younger woman the European way, with a kiss on each cheek. Like Elektra's own mother, Mrs. Slaughter had cultivated an air of sophistication and noblesse to compensate for humble origins. The younger woman grabbed a glass of wine from a passing waiter and made herself at home at the Slaughters' table, her mouth running the whole time. Elektra didn't need Matt's ears to know that the topic of conversation was vapid and dull. Eric Slaughter's narrow face grew more pinched by the moment until he whispered something in his wife's ear and rose from his seat for the first time all night.

 _Oh, thank you, you beautiful boring idiot_. For a moment Elektra feared Slaughter would just take a seat at the bar, but he walked past all the rows of tables and right out of the ballroom. Elektra grabbed Matt's arm.

"He's moving," she said, dragging Matt away from the table. He was going to have to wait on that whiskey. The two of them quickly made their way to the doorway and Matt gestured down the hall with his cane.

"This way," he said.

Elektra went the direction he indicated. A few pockets of people lounged out here to escape the din of the ballroom, but they were too engrossed in their own conversations to pay her and Matt any mind. She followed Matt's directions to the men's restroom.

"Is anyone else in there?" she asked.

Matt paused, cocked his head. "Wait," he said, gripping her arm. A few moments later a younger man exited the bathroom and gave the two of them a quizzical look, but moved on. "Okay," Matt said. "It's clear."

Elektra put her hand on the door pull and then paused. "Is he, like…peeing?" She didn't care about embarrassing Eric Slaughter, but she really, really would rather not catch him with his literal pants down. As they say, some things can't be unseen.

Matt barked out a short laugh. "He's washing his hands."

 _Thank God_. "Watch the door."

Matt ignored her and followed her into the men's room. He folded his cane and stuck it through the door handle, effectively locking it behind them.

Eric Slaughter didn't appear surprised when he looked up from toweling off his hands. He let out a weary sigh. "Elektra."

She advanced forward, feeling her hands ball into fists reflexively at the sight of Slaughter's tired, passive expression. _Does he even care at all_?

"Why are you trying to destroy everything my father built?"

Slaughter sighed again and placed the damp towel down on the counter. "There's a lot you don't know, Elektra."

"Then tell me!" she demanded.

"Hugo didn't want you to know."

"Don't…" Elektra could feel her fists trembling. "You were his friend."

Slaughter had nothing to say to that. She could hit him if she wanted to. Matt hung back by the door, silent. It was her call.

Elektra shook her head, trying to clear the violent thoughts. Slaughter couldn't answer her questions without his teeth.

"I know you're working for Wilson Fisk." The first real flicker of fear cross Slaughter's wrinkled old face. "And I know he made Daddy…"

Slaughter's mouth set in a hard, grim line. "I was told that if I didn't resume your father's _operations_ , my wife would be killed. I was shown things that led me to believe that threat was credible."

"Fisk threatened to have your wife killed if you didn't smuggle heroin for him?" Matt said. "Why were you communicating with Fisk while he was in prison?"

Slaughter regarded him curiously for a moment, but replied. "He sent his woman as his proxy, right after Hugo died."

"And Mr. Natchios was threatened in the same way before you?" Matt asked.

"Yes," Slaughter said. "I think…when Fisk was arrested, Hugo was able to stop. But then that woman came to him this summer and asked him to start it again. He refused."

_Oh, Daddy…_

Elektra was glad Matt was able to continue the rational train of questions. "Why Natchios? Why you? Dozens of companies ship into New York every day."

Slaughter caught Elektra's gaze and then swallowed hard. "We were already acquainted."

"What? With Fisk?" Elektra asked, advancing on the older man. "How?"

"When Hugo went to buy his first ship, no bank would give him a loan. He had to borrow through other channels."

“Why not?” Elektra asked. She knew exactly nothing about loans.

“Hugo was an immigrant with no real property to his name. He had nothing to offer as collateral.”

"So he went to a loan shark," Matt said.

"After every shipment, he sent his henchman to collect," Slaughter said. "That henchman was a young man named Wilson Fisk."

"Fisk?" Elektra shook her head, trying to make sense of what Slaughter was saying.

"Fisk buried his past," Matt said. "And everyone in it."

"Unlike the rest of them, I suppose we were more useful to him alive than dead. And we were both men who could be controlled."

Matt finally stepped away from the door, pushing past Elektra until he was face to face with Slaughter.

"This loan shark, who was he? Mafia?"

"Yes," Slaughter said. “Don Rigoletto.”

Elektra’s eyes widened. The man from Cranston’s files.

Matt looked as if he’d almost been expecting that. “Fisk worked for Rigoletto. And I guess he took over when Rigoletto got put away.”

“That, I don’t know,” Slaughter said. “Hugo had paid all his debts by that time. He thought he was done with those sorts of people.”

“So when did Fisk approach him about the heroin?” Matt asked.

“About two years ago. He claimed he had proof of Hugo’s tax evasion. I don’t know if it was enough for serious legal repercussions, but it was enough to ruin the company’s - and your father’s - reputation.”

Elektra frowned, trying to avoid looking at her own confused reflection in the mirror. “So he threatened Daddy, and then you. But what about the money? I found Daddy’s records, and the amount of money…”

“That money was laundered through the company, and then paid back to Fisk in the form of stock dividends. Your father and I never saw a cent of it.”

“Stock? Fisk _owns shares in the company_?” Elektra thought she was going to be sick.

“Under a series of dummy accounts,” Slaughter said. “Not enough under any one name to amount to any kind of controlling interest. Those...files, you mentioned.” Slaughter swallowed. “Did you destroy them?”

“They’re somewhere safe,” Elektra said, resisting the urge to look at Matt. “That’s all you need to know.”

Slaughter sighed. “If you think you’re going to somehow threaten Fisk with that information - _don’t_.” That final word had an air of command to it. “Your father already tried.”

"Is that what happened the second time?" Matt demanded. "When Natchios refused?"

“Hugo made those records of every one of Fisk’s shipments for a reason. He proposed an exchange of incriminating information-”

“And Fisk had him killed.” Matt’s fists clenched, anger plain on his face. “But Fisk wasn’t able to get the records either.”

“No.” Slaughter turned to Elektra. “But that’s why you have to leave it alone. Why Hugo would _want_ you to leave it alone.”

Elektra felt like she was going to throw up. Everything her father had done to protect the company, terrible things… and still Fisk had the power to bring it down.

"I'm sorry, Elektra," Slaughter said. "And I'm sorry that I can't stop running these shipments for Fisk."

Elektra looked Slaughter in the eye. "Fisk can't hurt anyone if he's dead."

Slaughter searched her face. "Hugo wouldn't want this for you," he said softly. "He wouldn't want you to put yourself in danger. He would-" His eyes darted to Matt. "He would want you to go on with your life. Be happy."

"I can't," she whispered.

Slaughter put his hands on her shoulders. "You can."

 

\----------

 

Eric Slaughter left the two of them alone in the men's room. Elektra turned on the sink.

"Can you give me a minute?" she asked. Matt could hear the hitch in her voice.

"Sure." He took his cane from where Slaughter had left it by the door and stepped outside the bathroom. He was probably going to need more than a minute to get his own anger under control. Every time he thought Wilson Fisk couldn't possibly come up with another way to piss him off, the asshole found a new way to surprise him. If Matt had known Fisk was blackmailing Elektra’s dad, would their final fight have ended differently? For someone who seemingly didn't know the identity of the man in the mask, Fisk sure knew how to hit him below the belt.

"Hey." It was Eric Slaughter. He pulled Matt several feet away from the bathroom door. "What are you to her? Boyfriend?"

"Something along those lines," Matt said.

"Then you need to stop her. The type of people-"

"I know exactly what type of person Fisk is," Matt said through gritted teeth. He knew it all too well.

"Then you know there is no happy ending for her if she keeps going this way," Slaughter said. Matt heard urgency in his voice. Regret. "She's too much like her mother. Hugo always worried she'd end up the same way."

"What?"

Slaughter's head shot up as the bathroom door opened. "Good night," he said, then quickly made his way down the hallway. Elektra didn't seem to notice. She didn't seem much more composed than she was before he left the bathroom either.

"I think I would like to get drunk now," she said, taking Matt's hand.

He nodded. "That sounds like an excellent idea."

He decided not to bring up what Slaughter had said about her mother as she led them back to the ballroom, even though his curiosity had been piqued. He knew her mother had died while Elektra was in middle school in some sort of accident - having a dead parent was something few of their college peers could relate to - but she had only ever spoken about her mother in superficial terms: that she was pretty; that she was stylish; that she had insisted her husband build her a big, fancy house on Long Island like in _The Great Gatsby_. How could he keep Elektra from doing anything when there were still so many things she kept secret from him?

They didn't go back to their table, but straight to the bar, which she told him was decorated with icicle lights and looked tacky (he was certain they were within earshot of the bartender when she said this). Matt could sense the subtle heat from the small bulbs halfway across the room; _tacky_ , however, was one of those things he sort of forgot about until someone reminded him.

"I hate everyone here but you," Elektra said to him after she'd downed two martinis. She leaned heavily on Matt's shoulder and he could feel the curve of one of her breasts pressing into the side of his arm. That feeling, with the help of a couple of glasses of expensive whiskey, made it easy to forget why he had been so mad, if only for a little while.

"Do you _know_ everyone here?" he asked. Quite a few people had come up to their table earlier in the evening, expressing the awkward sort of greetings people always gave to someone who had recently experienced some great tragedy, but her distracted and dismissive manner had quickly driven them all away.

"No," she said. "But I know I hate them. Because they don't know anything…" Elektra shook her head and ordered another drink.

"Hey," Matt said, trying to lighten the mood. "I hope you're not expecting me to be the designated driver tonight, because I think I've had a little too much. Also, I can't see anything."

"No, no. You're a good driver, because I taught you. Remember?"

Matt laughed at the memory. Back in college, Elektra had been horrified when she’d learned he didn't know how to drive - even though there was literally no reason for him to ever get behind the wheel - and had taken him out to a very large, very empty parking lot to teach him. Foggy had berated him for being so reckless, and then begged him to convince Elektra that Foggy needed lessons behind the wheel of her sports car too. She was not convinced.

“You look great tonight,” Matt found himself saying. He'd meant to tell her that earlier, but she had been too distracted with the Slaughter mess.

“You can tell that?” Elektra asked, her tone bemused.

“I can tell that every man in here has to catch his breath whenever you walk by. A couple of the women too. And one of them called you a slut, so...jealous.”

Elektra laughed. “You were doing pretty good until the end, Murdock. The thing is,” Elektra grabbed his hand and placed it along the side of her face, “I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Only you.”

Matt ran his fingertips over her high cheekbone, into the hollow of her cheek and down her jaw. “You _know_ what I think.” Matt found himself wondering if the men's restroom was empty again.

But there wasn’t time to contemplate that. Suddenly, the whole energy of the building changed, like the rapid change in pressure of an airplane cabin during takeoff. He heard large, unwieldy footfalls in stride with smaller, nimble heels down the hallway. _No_ , Matt thought. _He wouldn’t dare show his face so soon_. Matt clutched Elektra’s hand, suddenly feeling stone cold sober.

His firm grip startled her. “What…?”

“We need to go,” he said, scanning for another exit. “Now.” The movement of air far to his right caught his attention. An opening. He could smell food cooking beyond it.

Matt pulled a twenty out of his wallet and slapped it on the counter. He had no idea if that was an appropriate tip, or if he was even supposed to tip, but offending the bartender was the least of his concerns.

“What the hell? Matt?” Elektra said as he began dragging her toward the door to the kitchen.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of coming face to face with Fisk; he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to control his temper if he did. And he _knew_ Elektra wouldn’t be able to control hers. Fisk deserved any and everything she could do to him, but not in front of a hundred witnesses.

He was nearly to the exit when a hush came over the room, pleasant, boisterous conversation replaced with sudden scandalized whispers.

“Is that…?”

“Who in the world invited _him_?”

Each of Fisk’s footsteps felt like a small earthquake, rattling Matt to his core. Vanessa moved at her new husband’s side with a poised dignity, either unaware or uncaring that she was on the arm of a rabid tiger. There was nothing Matt could do to stop Elektra from turning around.

Her heart rate nearly doubled, her breathing halted. “Matt.” Her voice was small and quiet, like a child’s.

“I know,” he said, tugging at her arm. She was rooted to the spot. “Not here, Elektra. Not now.” Slaughter’s warning echoed in Matt’s ears. “ _Please_.”

Elektra slipped through his fingers like water. She stomped off toward Fisk and Vanessa, her footfalls loud and furious. Matt had no choice but to follow. He was so intent on catching her that he nearly bowled into a waiter.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. The man didn’t seem to notice Matt or his apology, probably staring slack-jawed at Fisk along with half the room.

“ _You_!” Elektra’s voice was quivering with emotion - rage or sorrow, maybe both. “How can you show your face here, after everything you’ve done?”

“Wilson was acquitted,” Vanessa said smoothly at Fisk’s side. Matt had a feeling she would be saying that a lot tonight. “Miss…?”

“Miss Natchios.” Fisk addressed her in that stiff way of his, almost like he was embarrassed to be speaking to anyone. He ought to be. “I know we’ve never met personally, but I... wanted to offer my condolences.”

Elektra froze, went rigid all over like she had been struck by lightning, just as Matt caught up with her. Grabbing her hand was the only thing that kept Matt from punching him in the face.

“Mister...Murdock, yes?" Fisk said to him. "You seem to be doing well for yourself.”

“Oh yes,” Vanessa said cordially. “I remember you now. I still work at the gallery, if you need to decorate. In fact, we just got-”

“ _Condolences_?” Elektra found her voice. “Are you fucking serious right now? Do you really think I don’t know?”

Matt felt the heat coming off Fisk in waves. Rage or shame? “Please... _stop_ ,” Fisk eked out between clenched teeth.

“Am I making you uncomfortable right now?” Elektra hissed. “Afraid someone might overhear? You’re a _murderer_.” She raised her voice and Matt could feel many sets of eyes upon them. “ _Murderer_!”

Vanessa moved to put a comforting hand on Elektra’s shoulder, and she recoiled like it was poison. “I think you’re a little...unhinged. It’s perfectly understandable after what you’ve been through.”

“Don’t act like you don’t know, bitch,” Elektra said to her. “That you didn’t do all his dirty work while he was sitting in jail.”

The discomfort Matt sensed radiating off Fisk magnified a hundredfold. The man was like a tire that someone kept pumping full of air, and soon he was going to pop. _Go ahead_ , Matt thought. _Take a swing in front of all these witnesses. You won’t be able to weasel out of that one_.

“Well,” Vanessa said coolly, placing a restraining hand on Fisk's arm. “I think you know very well what it’s like to do unsavory things for a man you love, Miss Natchios.”

Elektra gasped like she’d been slapped in the face.

“I’m surprised you were invited to something like this,” Matt said to Fisk. He couldn’t help himself. His anger was already on a hair trigger; if Fisk said much more to Elektra he wouldn’t be able to contain it.

“The law found him innocent,” Vanessa reminded them all once more. “Surely a lawyer respects the decision of the court?”

“I respect the truth,” Matt said.

“Well,” Fisk said abruptly. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.” He sort of bobbed his head and started to shuffle away when Matt called out.

“What’s your plan for Hell’s Kitchen now? Still building your 'better tomorrow?'”

Fisk stopped. His whole demeanor, his very presence, instantly transformed into something malevolent. Menacing. It was the man - the monster - Matt had fought the night he put him away.

“You can put an addict in treatment, Mister Murdock,” Fisk replied, “But you can’t force him to stay clean if he doesn’t want to. Hell’s Kitchen... _this city_...it doesn’t want to be saved. It wants to wallow in its own filth. I intend to watch it drown.”

 

\----------

 

As soon as they were back out on the sidewalk, Elektra immediately lit up a cigarette. Normally the smoke would bother Matt (and she had desperately been trying to cover up her habit since he first ran into her), but all his attention was still focused on Fisk. The walls of the building muffled his voice, but Matt could still make it out, stiffly exchanging greetings and pleasantries with Manhattan’s upper crust. _You unbelievable bastard_.

Their encounter with Fisk had been sobering, to say the least, but Elektra was in no fit state to drive them anywhere. She refused to take a cab, so they made their way across town on foot. The night was chilly, but Matt barely noticed; his anger at Fisk was enough to keep him warm for a good, long time. Elektra raged in spurts, growling out an incomplete (and incoherent) sentence before lapsing back into teeth-grinding silence. And he let her. He wasn’t going to tell her to calm down, not when Fisk had given her every reason and then some to despise him. Not when Fisk didn’t even have the decency or shame to hide his head for a little while.

Elektra suddenly grabbed his arm, her nails biting through his coat into his skin. “Let’s go jump him,” she said. “After he leaves the party.”

Matt shook his head. It was tempting, but it was also stupid. “That place was crawling with security. And Fisk will have brought his own bodyguards as well.”

“Then let’s follow him and get him at his house.”

“I guarantee his house is just as well-guarded as the party.” Probably more.

“God dammit, Matt! He’s right back there!” She turned around briefly. “And he’s walking around that fucking party like he owns it! Like he…he...”

“Listen to me,” Matt said quietly, hoping to get her to lower her voice. “This is the big leagues now. Not some idiot street dealers. Fisk is smart, Elektra. Planning two steps ahead. Which means we need to plan at least three.” _Even then, that might not be enough_. Matt thought back to the night of Fall Fest, the blood and the screams, the confused police, the panic.

“Do you remember what Cranston said?" Matt went on. "Fisk is getting married this week. _That’s_ where we’ll get him.” Even though he knew it was a longshot, Matt was hoping to talk her out of confronting the big man himself, for her own safety. Last time they fought, Fisk had tossed Daredevil over his head like he was a water balloon, and Matt had a good sixty pounds on Elektra.

“Getting married to his whore.” Elektra dropped her spent cigarette on the pavement and violently crushed it with the very pointy toe of her shoe. “Her ring was the size of a fucking continent.”

Matt was still having a difficult time grappling with that revelation. When he had met Vanessa at her gallery, she’d seemed charming, sophisticated, and just...nice. Maybe all of that was just part of the sales pitch, but he didn’t think so. At that time, he’d assumed Fisk had hoodwinked her along with the rest of New York into thinking he was a humble, rags-to-riches businessman. But she had stood by him once the truth came out. Worse, she had helped facilitate the schemes - assassination, drug dealing - that ultimately got him acquitted. She knew exactly what he was, and she still loved him. Loved him enough to essentially commit murder. What had she called it? ‘ _Unsavory things_?’

That reminded Matt. “What did she mean?”

“Mean by what?” Elektra lit up another cigarette. They smelled horrible, but he liked following the heat as the warm smoke entered her mouth, traveled down into her lungs and mingled there before traveling back up and out her nose. It gave him a clearer, less vague sense of her face, and right now she was frowning at him.

“She said you'd both done bad things for the men you loved.” Matt assumed Vanessa had been talking about Elektra’s father - he certainly wasn’t going to presume she had meant _him_ \- and he started to worry just how much Vanessa actually knew about Elektra’s movements since she’d returned to the city: the sneaking around, breaking and entering, the threats, and in one particular case (so far), shooting off a couple of fingers.

For a moment, Elektra’s lungs stopped working at all, idling all full of smoke, before rapidly and shallowly resuming their functions. It took her much longer than he would have thought to respond.

“You know when I’m lying, so I won’t…” She swallowed hard and leaned against the side of the nearest building. “You remember what I told you about my dad, right? About the smuggling?”

Matt nodded. Of course he did. They’d had a conversation about it with Eric Slaughter no more than two hours ago.

“The drugs weren’t the only thing he smuggled into New York. The worst, and the only thing that was illegal, but...yeah.”

Matt frowned in confusion. “How do you smuggle something that isn’t illegal?”

“You lie about it to the duty officials. You bring it into this country, tax-free.” She took a deep breath of the cold night air, no smoke. “Well, that was me. That was my job.”

“What?”

“I bribed duty officials to look the other way. To declare a couple less crates than there were. Me. I did that.” Her tone was irritated and flippant, but her hands were shaking. “Cigarettes, alcohol, all that shit has a massive import tax. My dad had some of his old friends down at the docks that were in on his scheme, but the newer guys, the young guys…”

“He asked you to convince them.” Up until now, Matt had felt nothing but sympathy for Hugo Natchios. Blackmailed into smuggling heroin for Fisk, murdered in his own apartment. But asking your daughter to do your dirty work just so you could pocket a couple more thousands was pretty despicable.

“I knew it was wrong, but I…” she shook her head. Matt could tell her nose had started to run, and he didn’t think it was just from the cold. “We don’t have to talk again, once this Fisk business is over,” she said quietly. “I understand.”

He didn’t. “What? Why wouldn’t we talk again?”

“You’re a lawyer. Well, not just that. You’re _you_. A God damn boy scout. You can’t be with... with someone like me.”

Suddenly, several rusty old puzzle pieces clicked in his head. “When did this start? Back in college?”

“Yeah. That was when Daddy first... That summer I went to Japan, I started doing all this. And I kept doing it.” The summer after they broke up. On good days, Matt liked to flatter himself and think she’d left the country because she was trying to avoid him, that he meant so much to her that she had to go to the other side of the planet to shake her feelings.

“Elektra, your dad asked you to do this. Your _dad_. It doesn’t matter how old you get - there’s a sense of obligation there.” _One your father clearly exploited_.

“You wouldn’t have done it, Matt. Even if it was your dad. You would have said, ‘No, I can make my own way.’ But me...I was too scared to do that. Too greedy, too lazy, too chickenshit to try.”

“ _That’s_ why you broke up with me?” Matt demanded.

“Sooner or later you were going to find out. Sooner or later the novelty of the wild rich girl was going to wear off. I wanted to get out in front of it, before you realized...You deserve someone _good_ , Matt. Someone who wasn’t scared to make their own way. Someone better than me.”

Matt frowned. “I don’t need you to decide what’s good for me. And now, after you've seen me shove an unarmed guy through a window, surely you must realize I’m not exactly a saint.” He paused, then added, “Last year I tried to kill Fisk.”

“You turned him over to the police,” Elektra said.

“Later, yeah. But before that, I tried to stab him. He had the same protective material under his clothes that I have on my suit, but I didn’t know it then. I tried to ram a knife right into his chest. I knew what that would do to him, and I... I wanted it to.”

Elektra paused for a long time, cigarette smoldering at her fingertips. “You’re confused,” she finally said. “And I’m only making it worse.”

“I _am_ confused. I’ve been confused since the night I found my dad lying dead in that alley. _You_ give me someone else to fight for, and I don’t mean that in a pity sort of way. It’s just…” Matt sighed. “I’m tired of fighting for that kid in the alley. Nothing I do will ever bring his father back. I know I can’t bring yours back either. But maybe... Maybe both of us don’t have to feel so alone.”

“Matt…”

“Come on.” Matt held out his hand, and Elektra took it tentatively. “We’ve got a wedding to crash.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man... Writing Fisk is quite a challenge; he's the only character whose scenes have required extensive rewrites. He's this odd mix of awkward, terrifying, and profound, which I absolutely love - but it definitely makes getting him right very tricky.
> 
> Also, I've opened the comments section to guests! So many guest readers have left me kudos (thanks!) that it only seems fair to allow you guys to comment as well. I'm always trying to improve my writing, so I really appreciate the feedback :3


	27. Chapter 27

The first step in Matt’s plan was to make sure he - and Elektra - were adequately protected. Melvin Potter had to be finished the repairs to his suit by now (it wasn’t like Matt could just call and check in on the progress). He put on his old black clothes and mask and made his way to the tailor’s workshop under the cover of darkness. He got a block away before he realized something was wrong.

The usual hum of machinery was gone, as were the classic rock tunes that usually blared out of Potter’s old-fashioned transistor radio. It was replaced by a dull, blubbering noise - the sound of a grown man weeping unabashedly like a child.

Matt immediately felt his adrenaline spike and he took off down the street. They were alone now, but whoever hurt Potter could always come back and finish the job.

“Melvin?” Matt shouted as he heaved the workshop’s large metal door aside. It screamed on its hinges. “Melvin, are you alright?”

He was answered by the _whirrrr_ of a rotary saw roaring to life and a great cry as Potter lunged toward him.

Matt only just manage to dodge him, feeling the heat of the twirling blade cut the air to his left. He knew how to disarm an opponent with a gun, knives, even a baseball bat - but a saw? It must have been powered by a battery because Matt couldn’t sense the presence of any cord to yank out of the wall to quickly neutralize the threat.

“You promised!” Potter shouted at him, taking wide swings with the saw, pushing Matt further back into the workshop each time. “You _promised_!”

 _Fisk_ , Matt realized. He’d promised to put him away. Promised he’d never hurt anyone again. Potter must not have understood it was out Daredevil’s hands as soon as Fisk was in police custody.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said as he ducked a wild swing from Potter and rolled through the man’s legs. “But this time Fisk will be gone for good!”

“No!” Potter screamed. The way he was thrashing about with the saw, he was just as likely to hurt himself as he was Matt. “ _You promised, and now she’s dead_!”

That gave Matt pause. Enough that when the next swing came, he wasn’t able to get out of the way entirely. It felt as if a tongue of flame licked the side of his ribs. Not deep. Not even deep enough to go much past the skin. That didn’t make it sting any less.

“Who?” Matt remembered Potter mentioning some friend Fisk was threatening, but never imagined Fisk would actually kill the woman. Potter was someone, as Eric Slaughter would say, whom Fisk still had a use for. But maybe, like Hugo Natchios, Fisk had a ‘spare’ in this particular area as well.

“Betsy!” Potter was crying now, fat tears wetting his cheeks. The effort of swinging such an unwieldy weapon had worn him out, each blow coming slower and sloppier than the last. “She was my friend! She was my friend...” Potter began to sob. He didn’t swing the saw, but he didn’t drop it either. It continued to make that ominous buzzing sound at his side.

“Fisk...Fisk killed Betsy?” Matt felt sick. _You promised_.

“She was my friend,” Potter said again.

“I’m going to stop Fisk.” Matt inched closer to the weeping man, remaining on his toes just in case. “He won’t hurt anyone ever again.”

“No.” All the rage had gone out of Potter and he sank to his knees, crying and defeated. “You promised, and you lied.” He dropped the saw - still spinning - to the concrete floor. Matt quickly (and carefully) snatched it up by the handle and ripped out the batteries.

“Melvin, I -”

“No! No...” Potter waved with his left hand toward something in the corner. A box. “No more promises. You’re a liar. Go away.”

Matt took the motion as tacit permission to retrieve his suit, and felt through the contents of the box until he found it. Beneath it was something smaller, made of the same material, and in the shapes of things Elektra usually left scattered all over his bedroom floor.

Matt tucked the clothing under his arm and opened his mouth to speak, but then shut it again. Potter remained where he had sat, sniffling, and clearly wanting nothing more to do with him.

 _I’m sorry_ , Matt thought as he pulled the wailing door shut behind him. _I’m sorry_.  

 

\----------

 

While he was out, Elektra decided to raid Matt’s fridge, although she found the contents lacking. She knew she shouldn’t complain - he still had more food on hand than she did. But nothing sweet. She took out one of his hoppy German beers with a sigh, popped the top, and went and laid down on Matt’s bed.

Matt had left to pick up his ridiculous costume (“ _protective suit_ ,” he insisted) from the man who had repaired it for him; she hadn’t asked to tag along and he hadn’t invited her. _That’s where we are now_.

Matt hadn’t seemed to care about the things she’d told him, the things she’d done, but he hadn’t explicitly said as much either. He was too preoccupied with Fisk to think about what she was saying. But that wouldn’t last forever. And after what she was going to do to Fisk, she knew that whatever they had, wondrous and passionate as it was, would be over.

 _Might as well try to enjoy it while it lasts_ , she thought, tipping the neck of the beer bottle toward Matt’s empty pillow. But it was hard to enjoy much of anything with Wilson Fisk’s mountainous shadow hanging over her. ‘ _My condolences_.’ It was almost too brazen to be true. If she hadn’t been so shocked, she could have killed him right there, smashed her glass and stabbed him with the broken pieces. Stabbed him like Matt had tried to do a year ago.

Elektra finished the drink and began to doze off when Matt returned.

“The batsuit all patched up?” she called lazily from the bedroom, not bothering to get out of bed. When Matt didn’t respond to that with even a sound of annoyance, she did get up. She found him taking a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle and with a six-inch gash across his ribs.

“What happened?” Elektra demanded, already on her way to grab the first-aid kit. _That’s where we are now_.

“Can you look something up for me?” Matt took another pull on the bottle.

“What?” Elektra pulled a wad of gauze...or something out of the kit. “You’re bleeding, you know.” Had he also been hit over the head?

“It’s fine,” he said, trying to wave away her concern. “Go get your computer.”

“God dammit, Matt,” Elektra grumbled. She took the bottle out of his hand and replaced it with the first aid kit before doing as he asked. “At least clean that out.”

“Look for woman named Betsy, probably killed in Hell’s Kitchen within the last week.” Matt removed his shirt with a wince, and Elektra was relieved to see no other fresh cuts or bruises on his body.

“Betsy who?”

Matt shook his head. “I don’t know her last name.”

“Oh- _kay_.” It took her a bit of clicking - during which time Matt did at least apply peroxide to his cut - but she eventually hit on an obituary that looked promising.

“Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Beatty,” Elektra read aloud. There was a picture of a woman who looked a good deal younger than her forty-three years, with corkscrew curls that made Elektra’s hair look positively tame. She wasn’t married, but had two sisters in Omaha and a gaggle of nieces and nephews who would no longer be traveling to New York to visit their Aunt Betsy.

“When did she die?” Matt asked.

Elektra resisted the urge to ask him what this was all about (and what it had to do with the cut on his side). “Two days ago.”

“How?”

“Um…” The obituary didn’t say, but searching the unfortunate woman’s full name and date of death yielded a news article. Elektra read the headline, “‘Social worker latest victim of gang violence.’ Looks like...she was shot in a mugging gone bad or something. How do you know this lady?”

“I don’t. I didn’t.” Matt was frowning like he did, though. “I guess Fisk had the Enforcers do his dirty work once again.”

“This woman was connected to Fisk?” Elektra’s eyebrows shot up. Was any murder in the city _not_ connected to him?

“Not directly,” Matt said. “Remember how Slaughter told us Fisk threatened to kill his wife? It was kind of like that.” He motioned at the cut on his torso. “Her friend was a little out of his head with grief.”

“Damn,” Elektra said, closing the laptop. “So Fisk was shambling around that party while a lady was being murdered on his command.” That sounded about right.

Matt gave her a grim smile. “He’s got a hundred of Manhattan’s finest to verify his alibi.”

“Jesus.” Elektra put her head down on the computer and visualized all the ways she was going to destroy Wilson Fisk before looking back up. “Did you at least get your suit fixed?”

“I did.” That seemed to brighten Matt’s mood, if only dimly. “Although I’m not sure about future repairs. There’s something else too.”

She followed Matt to the couch, where he handed her a folded up set of clothes made of the same red and black material as his Daredevil suit, but that was sitting on the coffee table. This outfit was smaller and more feminine, the styling reminiscent of a leather jacket of hers that she realized she hadn’t seen in the last few weeks.

Elektra raised an eyebrow. “This is for me?”

Matt looked a little chagrined. “To keep you safe. I...I probably should have consulted you on the style, but I wanted it to be a surprise.” He wrung his empty hands nervously. “Do you hate it?”

Elektra took off the t-shirt she was wearing and handed it to him, then put on the new clothes (she had already been pantsless). They fit her perfectly. The material was light and supple, warm but breathable.

“Please don’t tell me there’s some goofy mask with cat ears or something,” Elektra said.

Matt laughed. “No. I _knew_ that wasn’t going to fly.”

“Good,” Elektra said. She flexed her knees and arms and the material flexed with her, like a second skin. “It’s good. Do we have to match though? I know red is my favorite color, but still.” What had that Cranston guy called her? ‘ _Mrs. Daredevil_?’ Barf.

“Oh, I didn’t...I guess he just used the same material on both.”

“Well, whatever,” Elektra said. Red really was her favorite color. “Just as long as no one expects me to beat up drug dealers and do the whole ‘ _get out of my city_ ’ spiel.”

“No.” Matt snorted. “So, speaking of the colors, the black parts are bulletproof; the red parts aren’t, but they hold up pretty well against blades.”

“That explains the pattern then.” The center front and back panels of her jacket were black, as were the under side of the sleeves from elbow to armpit. Her pants were similar, with the bulletproof portions concentrated on the torso and inner part of the thighs.

“None of that is much protection against a punch.” From the bruises she’d seen on his body, she knew Matt was speaking from experience. “But you’re quick, so…” he trailed off, still fidgeting. “So, you really don’t hate it?”

Elektra laughed. “No, I don’t hate it. Why would I hate it?”

“Well, I know how you are about your clothes, and it’s not exactly Neimans…”

God, he was so cute when he was awkward. “Thank you, Matt.” Elektra stood on her toes to plant a kiss on Matt’s cheek, but all she could see was Wilson Fisk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Precious Melvin D: Unfortunately for our favorite tailor, I don't think Fisk is the type to make idle threats. 
> 
> Bit of a shorter chapter today, but I promise that Sunday's update will make up for it! It contains probably my absolute favorite moment from this story, so I'm very excited to share that one with you guys.


	28. Chapter 28

"Elektra, please."

They’d been going at it for nearly an hour. With every one of Matt's entreaties, she ground the blade of one of her knives harder against the whetstone. He could taste the particles of iron as they wafted up into the air, settling on her skin and hair.

"Please let me handle Fisk tonight," Matt said when she didn't respond.

"Not a chance," she said flatly, holstering the knife. She began to sharpen its twin.

"Elektra, you don't know Fisk. You've never fought him, he-"

She finally looked up from her work. "Shut up, Matt."

He knew he was only pissing her off at this point, but couldn't help himself. If there was even the slightest chance she would heed his words and hang back, let him ambush Fisk outside of his wedding, Matt had to try.

"He'll kill you." Matt figured he might as well get to the point.

"Fuck you," Elektra snarled. So much for her taking pity on him.

"Elektra…"

"No, seriously, Matt. Fuck you." She stood from his couch and strapped a knife holster to her thigh. " _You_ can take on Fisk, but what? I'm not good enough? Don't insult me."

Matt sighed. "I'm just trying to protect you."

"I don't need you to protect me." She zipped up the bulletproof jacket Melvin Potter had made for her. "If you don't want me to go, then stop me."

Matt felt her weight shift to her back foot through the floorboards, sensed her arms raise in a defensive stance. As if he'd ever raise a hand to her. Matt knew it would be better for him to knock her on the head and lock her up in his apartment; she might never forgive him for that, but at least she'd be safe. Sometimes he was just too damn chivalrous for his own good.

Elektra grabbed the pistol from her purse and tucked it into her jacket pocket.

"Fisk's suits are bulletproof," Matt said. “Same material as ours.”

"His head isn't."

 

\----------

 

For all his talk about it, Matt didn't really have much of a plan. Ambush Fisk when he left the church, beat the piss out of him, and try not to get shot by too many of his bodyguards while he was at it. Oh, and keep Elektra from killing anyone too.

Would beating Fisk to a pulp really accomplish anything? Maybe not, but it would slake Matt's anger. If the law wouldn't punish him, the devil would.

The church on 46th Street was Episcopalian, not Catholic. It shouldn't have made any difference, Matt knew, but somehow that made him feel a little less guilty about what he was about to do on consecrated ground. It was Fisk's faulty anyway, for having the audacity to set foot in a church in the first place.

At least he didn't have to worry about innocent bystanders. Aside from Vanessa and the priest, the only other people in and around the church were armed, patrolling with heavy and confident footfalls, chattering the all-clear into plastic earpieces.

Matt sent Elektra to deal with the guards patrolling the perimeter while he scaled the back of the building with the aid of his grappling hook. They had agreed to ambush Fisk as he left the building; his secondary plan - if you could really call it that - was to pounce on Fisk before Elektra could shoot him. After that? Hopefully she'd see the beating he was giving Fisk was punishment enough. But was it really? After everything Fisk had done? Matt pushed the thought from his mind and continued to climb.

Fisk had posted two men on the roof in addition to the men on the ground. They hadn't noticed the soft metallic clang as his grappling hook hit the roof, the scraping sound as he secured his weight against the tile. They were too busy strafing the concrete below with flashlights and gun barrels (which Elektra deftly avoided). One of the first things Stick had taught him was that people relied on their eyesight far too much.

Matt pulled himself up to the rooftop and crept along the tiles, pushing himself flat against the side of the belfry. One of the men sighed in boredom as the other grumbled about the cold. _The least of your problems_ , Matt thought.

Beneath his feet he was acutely aware of the hulking presence of Wilson Fisk, there at the altar, several dozen feet below the gently arched ceiling, standing alongside the woman who inexplicably loved him.

Before Fisk had been arrested, it was easy to assume that Vanessa had been fooled by his magnanimous proclamations and pretend altruism along with the rest of the city; there could be little doubt now that she knew exactly what sort of monster he was. And yet, here she was, exchanging vows in that soft voice of hers with a man who had bludgeoned his own father to death with a hammer.

With his back flat against the cold stone, Matt pivoted around the corner of the small bell tower until he was facing the guards' backs. He was vaguely aware of Elektra taking out another one of the men in the alley to his right.

"Huh?" One of the men on the roof tensed. Matt knew there was no way that man had heard her; _he_ had barely heard her. But a pop of static in the man's earpiece roused suspicions.

"Men," the guard said quietly. "Sound off." A series of names, each followed by 'all clear' began to rattle off into the guards' ear canals, a list that Matt knew would at least be one name short. _Shit_ , he thought. _So much for biding my time_.

Matt lunged forward, knocking the nearest guard off his feet. Before he could alert the others, Matt tore the plastic earpiece and microphone from the man's face and tossed it across the roof. As the guard struggled to right his rifle so the barrel was facing Matt's chest, Matt grappled with him. With the man on his back, Matt had all the leverage and broke the guard's grip. Matt flipped the rifle and rammed the butt of the gun into the man's forehead.

His partner cried out. Matt could feel the miniscule change in temperature from the heat of the bulb as the man turned his flashlight on him. Matt rose, still wielding the back end of the rifle. He sensed the remaining guard raising his gun and taking aim and -

Something whizzed through the air and straight into the guard's neck. A knife. Not one of Elektra's, but shorter and narrower, the kind made for throwing. The man dropped his gun and toppled over, clutching his neck and choking on his own blood.

There was no time to help him. Swinging across the rooftops like a demented Tarzan, there was the scent of gunpowder and ninety-nine cent soap. The sniper. The Bullseye Killer. When the man alighted on the roof of the church, Matt was sure he was smiling.

"Long time, no see, Red."

Matt knew he should have expected this. If he and Elektra had managed to find out about Fisk's wedding, of course this psychopath had too. Semi-automatic rifle in one hand. Pistols strapped to both hips. Thick kevlar vest. Two more knives like the one he'd used to kill Fisk's guard were concealed in his boots.

"I don't know how you done it, boy." It seemed the sniper was back to running his mouth, toying with him, but there was a definite edge behind his lazy drawl. "I killed a man from a half mile away, more than once. But you, five yards away - _you made me miss_."

All Matt could think was that he didn't have time for this. He needed to take out this gunman, and do it fast, before Fisk left the church and Elektra slit his throat and got herself locked up for murder.

Matt pivoted back toward the center of the roof and charged. Anticipating a gunshot or some sort of grappling move, Matt was unprepared when the other man deftly hopped aside at the last moment like a prize-winning bullfighter. Matt skidded to a halt to keep himself from running right off the roof. The gunman was laughing.

"You got something wrong with your ears, don't you, Red? I noticed it last time."

 _Not wrong_ , Matt thought. The man raised his rifle - not at Matt, but away from him. It wasn't the high-caliber sniper rifle that had nearly deafened Matt during their last confrontation, but something smaller, the kind of gunfire he could tolerate. It was too late for him to do anything when he realized just what the man was aiming at.

 _CLANG_. Someone might as well have put the massive church bell on Matt's head and pounded it with a sledgehammer. Each bullet that struck its iron exterior felt like it was rattling around in his skull, forcing Matt to his knees with a scream.

 

\----------

 

Elektra felt the body of Fisk's guard go limp and heavy in her arms. She let him crumple alongside the main doors to the church, and left the tranquilizer in his neck. She slipped inside.

Like most churches in the city, there was a smaller room in the entryway with grand double doors leading to the sanctuary. Fisk had posted two more of his drones on these doors, and in the tighter confines inside the church, there was no way for Elektra to take them on separately.

A sudden clamor on the roof drew her attention away from the guards. There was a series of gunshots, and at the same time the massive bell above the church rang wildly, like the person tugging the rope was having a seizure.

 _Matt_ , she thought. _What the hell are you doing_? Fisk had to know they were here now. The noise stopped, but continued to buzz in her ears. Both guards had unholstered their pistols and one was barking something into his earpiece. Before Elektra could calculate her next move, there was a great shattering sound and the building shook. A woman's scream came from the sanctuary.

The guards immediately pushed through the double doors. Elektra took advantage of the chaos to slip in behind them, her mind running wildly. Was it a bomb? An earthquake?

She crouched behind the last pew, gun in hand. Men were shouting for 'Mr. Fisk,' their shoes crunching on wood and glass. Most of the candles lighting the room must have been gutted out in the blast (or Fisk was hoping his bride would find him less repulsive in near-darkness), and the few candles that remained created small, flickering pools of light and massive, looming shadows.

At the very back of the church, where a large stained-glass window should have been the centerpiece, there was a great gaping hole, a black mouth filled with jagged broken teeth.

In the low light, she quickly made out the hulking shape of Wilson Fisk, and beneath him, a much smaller woman in a simple, light-colored dress. He was helping her up from the floor as his guards surrounded them, asking her if she was alright like he was a normal human being with normal concerns for other people.

 _You're not a person_ , she thought. _You're a monster_. It took every ounce of her willpower not to start shooting at him right then.

Slow, rolling laughter drew her attention back to the shattered window. A figure, hanging onto a rope, swung over the broken glass and altar and dropped to his feet in the aisle between the frontmost rows of pews. He crouched over another man on the ground, flanked by broken wooden benches. The prone figure was on knees and elbows, feebly crawling and clutching its head. In the low candlelight, she could just make out the hints of dark red and those ridiculous devil horns…

The crouching figure rose and kicked Matt in the ribs. Elektra had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. When the man whirled around, she could see he was wearing a black balaclava and SWAT-style gear. It was _him_. The man who shot her father.

"Where's all the press, Billy-boy?" The man drawled. "Not even friends and family? Hell, I reckoned if both old Red here and I heard about your wedding, a couple of reporters must've shown up."

Fisk stepped protectively in front of his wife - Vanessa, that was her name - and faced the man. Her father's two killers, face-to-face. And Matt Murdock lying on the ground in between them.

"What have you done, Poindexter?" Fisk bellowed.

A smaller man in black robes - the priest, Elektra assumed - skittered out from behind Fisk's men and disappeared behind a door to the left of the altar. If anyone else had noticed him, they didn't seem to care. The gunman gestured to Matt, and kicked him again when he started moving. Elektra's attention was being pulled in so many different directions - kill Fisk, kill the sniper, save Matt - that she stood there paralyzed, unable to do anything at all.

"I just want what I'm owed is all," the sniper - Poindexter - said. "For bringin' you the devil's head on a platter."

As he stared at Daredevil's prone form, Fisk's entire presence changed - no longer a hulking man-child in a tuxedo, but a living shadow, a darkness consuming everything in its path. _You don't know him_. Now she understood what Matt had meant.

Fisk took a step forward. The gunman clicked his tongue. "Not so fast, Billy-boy. I got my own score to settle with Red here, first. Then you can use what's left of him for a punching bag."

Fisk paused, then extended one of his giant, beefy hands. "I'll…double the initial offer. Give him to me."

Behind him, Vanessa reached out and tugged on Fisk's jacket. "Wilson, we should go."

Poindexter laughed again. "You and me both know this ain't about money. Not anymore."

Fisk turned to his guards. "Get her home," he said, motioning at Vanessa. "Don't leave her side until I return."

Two of the guards began to escort Vanessa toward the door the priest had exited, dragging more than flanking her. "Wilson, please!” Vanessa cried. “Come with me! Please!"

With one last long look at his wife, Fisk's bald head swiveled back to Matt once the door slammed. It didn't help Elektra decide what to do, but at least there were two less armed men to worry about.

"It's gonna be like that, Billy-boy?" The sniper shrugged his shoulders. He grabbed Matt by the ankles, dragging him back the few feet he'd managed to crawl away. "First things first, eh?" Elektra's eyes widened as she saw what the man was going for. Matt's mask.

She pivoted from behind the pew without thinking, bringing her gun up, aiming at the man's hand. A gust of cold air from the broken window sent the candlelight darting about the room. Her shot went wide, the bullet making a hollow _thunk_ as it embedded in the wooden back of the nearest pew.

"Well, well, well," Poindexter drawled, turning his head in her direction. Fisk was looking at her too. "What have we got here? She don't look like one of yours, Billy-boy."

Elektra knew she should have been afraid. But she felt exhilarated. Vindicated. _Finally, they see me. Finally, they will pay for what they've done_.

She pulled her own mask away from her face. Matt had a good reason to conceal his identity; she didn't. Not from these two.

"I'm Hugo Natchios's daughter. And I'm going to kill you both."

Fisk's expression, if he had one at all, was unreadable in the darkness. The gunman laughed at her.

"Oh, yeah…the poor little rich girl. Did you find my present? You know, when I saw that picture of daddy dearest, I relived that kill all over again. Shooting him right between the eyes…"

Elektra aimed her gun at his mouth, right at the gap between his two front teeth. As she was about the pull the trigger, the gun jumped in her hand, and those fucking teeth were smiling at her. A splinter of wood was lodged in the barrel.

Somewhere, in the deep recesses of her brain, the logical part of her realized that Poindexter could have just as easily thrown that splinter into her eye. That she was now only alive because he let her, because he wanted to toy with her. So much for keeping a cool head.

"And did you find what you were looking for in my apartment?" Elektra jeered back at him, tucking the now-useless gun away back into her jacket. "My father's files? I know what you did down on the docks, Fisk. And everyone else is going to know too."

Fisk didn't move from his position near the altar of the church. "Kill him." He pointed at Poindexter. "Knock her and the mask out and tie them up."

Elektra unsheathed both her knives as Poindexter scooped Matt up off the floor. With one arm around his neck, he used Matt's body as a shield as Fisk's guards advanced on him, stabilizing the pistol in his other hand directly against Matt's left ear. He shot each of Fisk's remaining men in the face like they were plastic targets at a country fair. Each shot caused Matt to scream in agony. From just a handful of yards away, the gunfire caused Elektra's ears to ring. That close would have been deafening to anyone, and with Matt's ears being as sensitive as they were… Somehow, Poindexter must have figured out about Matt's senses, or at least how to use them against him.

Elektra jumped forward as Poindexter took out the last guard, slashing Poindexter's arm from wrist to elbow, causing his grip on Matt to loosen. Matt tumbled to the floor, clutching his ear. Elektra could tell he was in terrible pain, but even worse, from the way he was sort of feeling around on the floor, he was completely disoriented. She ducked behind the adjacent pew as Poindexter trained his gun on her.

Before the sniper could shoot anyone, Fisk charged forward like a great bull. In his hand he wielded one of the church's tall candlesticks like a police baton. Fisk struck the gun from Poindexter's hand. He swung again, clearly aiming for the gunman's head, but the leaner man easily ducked out of his path.

Elektra dropped to her belly and crawled forward, lashing out at both men's ankles with her blades. The knife slid through Fisk's silk suit easily, but went no further, exposing a black, mesh-like fabric beneath. The same fabric that kept Matt safe, and was now keeping her safe too.

On Poindexter, though, she drew blood. He hissed and stumbled - she must not have managed to sever anything vital to keeping him on his feet - and Elektra quickly rolled under the pew in front of her before he could counter.

But then she felt herself being yanked across the shattered glass on the church floor. She screamed as Fisk wrenched her upward by the shoulder, lifting her several feet off the ground as easily as if she were a stuffed toy. Elektra slashed at his arms desperately, only to find each cut blocked by the protective layer built into his jacket.

Fisk threw her toward the back of the church. She managed to twist her body in mid-air so that she didn't land on her back, but it still knocked the wind out of her. The pews she landed on splintered beneath her. Elektra groaned, testing her arms and legs; nothing was broken, but it hurt like hell. She'd lost one of her knives in the fall too.

As she rolled off the pile of broken wood, she saw that Matt had managed to use the side of another pew to pull himself to his feet. He grabbed Fisk's suit with one hand, and began pummeling him with the other.

Poindexter grabbed Matt's fist as he raised it to hit Fisk once more, and Fisk grabbed Matt's other arm. They were both tugging on him like two dogs fighting over a piece of meat. _No_ , she thought. _You took my father away from me_ . _You don't get to take him away from me too!_

Ignoring the protests from her body, Elektra leapt on Poindexter's back before he and Fisk split Matt in two. With her legs wrapped firmly around his body, she tried to bring her remaining blade up to the man's throat. Poindexter grabbed her wrist and Elektra cried out as her muscles failed her, as he slowly forced her hand away from his neck. With one last twist, he forced the knife from her hand.

Poindexter laughed as he hefted her blade, and Elektra decided to try using her hands instead, wrapping them around his neck and pushing both her thumbs into his trachea, turning that awful laugh into a gag.

Poindexter suddenly lurched forward, forcing Elektra off his back. She landed on her feet and backpedaled toward the front of the sanctuary as he slashed at her, until her back was against the altar. Elektra ducked out of another slash, but it was a feint, and the man's other fist planted in her gut. She doubled over, gasping.

When she looked up, a slim blade was flying directly at her left shoulder. Another at her right. There was no time to dodge. But the slender throwing blades glanced off the protective fabric of her new jacket. Poindexter snarled at this, his plan to evidently pin her to the altar foiled, and charged forward. This time Elektra had enough time to step aside. He whirled around as she dodged and shoved her own knife into the center of her chest.

Elektra gasped. The blade sliced through the zipper and caught on the protective fabric underneath, but Poindexter kept pushing. With both hands around the hilt of the blade, he thrust it again, forcing her feet off the ground.

Her own weight was slowly impaling her on the blade. She could feel the protective fabric giving way in microscopic increments, the pain as the very tip of the blade bit into her skin. Poindexter hissed and kept pushing. Through his mask she could only see his gapped-teeth and his big black eyes, eyes full of fervor as he anticipated her death. _No_ , she thought. _Not him. Not like this_.

Elektra reached out and her fingertips found flowers. Beneath them, a ceramic vase. She grabbed it and smashed it over Poindexter's head. They both tumbled to the floor, her knife skidding away and out of reach.

Dazed, Poindexter began laughing. She felt blood running down between her breasts. Felt all the rage and hurt of the last few months welling up inside of her. _He killed my father_ . _He killed my father_.

Elektra grabbed a large shard of glass from the floor and with both hands drove it into Poindexter's chest. She drove it in again. And again. And again.

In her frenzy, she didn't notice that his thick kevlar vest was taking the brunt of the blade, that she was only really scratching the surface of his chest. That the glass was sawing through her gloves and cutting deep into her hands. The only thing she cared about was that he stopped laughing.

 

\----------

 

Matt could hear nothing in his left ear but an incessant ringing, so loud and insistent that it seemed to echo through his brain, smothering his remaining senses. It was only that Wilson Fisk was so big of a target that Matt managed to connect any punches at all.

They had little effect on the larger man. But with Fisk's attention - and wrath - trained on Daredevil, he was ignoring Elektra. Matt had come here tonight wanting to punish him, but now he just wanted to keep her safe. Three distinct heartbeats pounded within the church walls, but with only one working ear he was having difficulty determining which belonged to whom.

He felt two bodies move closer to the front of the church as Fisk slammed his makeshift bludgeon into Matt's ribs. Matt clutched Fisk's suit jacket as his knees buckled to keep from going down. _I should have dodged that_ , he thought.

But there was no time to chide himself. Fisk slammed the back of his hand into Matt's jaw; he tasted blood as he toppled backward onto a buckled pew, breaking the wood further. Matt rolled onto the church floor as Fisk swung again, and through the floorboards he felt a large set of boots planted firmly, a smaller set scraping the floor until they weren't touching at all. _Elektra_.

With his good ear facing the broken window, he heard sirens in the distance. Growing closer. But at this moment Matt didn't care about the cops. Fresh blood scented the air. _Elektra_. _Oh God, please_. _Not her_.

Matt scrambled to his feet. But Fisk grabbed the back of his collar and dragged Matt back to the church's aisle. _No_ ! Matt stopped caring about his ear. His synapses were flooded with white noise and he struck out with his fists. He didn't care what he was hitting so long as he connected. And he did. Fisk was too big and too slow to keep up with the onslaught. _Pay for what you did_.

Two bodies tumbled to the floor. Elektra was screaming. _She's alive_. More blood. The sirens grew louder. Fisk paused and took one last swing at Matt's head. This time, he felt it coming, and ducked. With a cry of frustration, Wilson Fisk turned and ran.

Matt knew he was running away. Matt knew he could try to chase him down, maybe even stop him, but he had to save _her_. From Poindexter, and from herself.

Elektra made noises that seemed to be a sob, a scream, and a snarl all at once. The air, tinged with blood, rapidly changed directions in front of her. Poindexter was on the ground, laughing.

Using the pews to guide him (and keep him upright), Matt stumbled down the aisle toward the altar. He reached out for Elektra's back and felt her muscles tense as she brought her arms over her head and slammed her hands down onto Poindexter's chest. Unless he had somehow lost it in the fight, Matt knew the sniper was wearing a thick kevlar vest, the kind police usually wore, and only a very long and very sharp knife would be able to seriously hurt him.

"Stop." Matt grabbed her arms. They were slick with blood. She tried to shrug him off, still making that awful sobbing sound. "It's okay," Matt said, grabbing her bloody hands. He knew the police would be here soon, and they'd find four dead men with bullets in them from Poindexter's gun. He didn't want them to find anyone else.

Matt pried a jagged shard of glass from Elektra's shaking hands and wrapped an arm around her chest, gently pulling her off the gunman. "It's okay," he said again. "Let's go." He pointed toward the side door, or where he thought the side door was, at least.

Poindexter was still laughing as Matt helped Elektra to her feet. "This ain't over, Red," the gunman croaked. "I owe you a bullet, boy. But first I'm gonna put one in your girl, just like I did her Daddy." The man did something with his hand; if Matt had to guess, Poindexter was pantomiming firing a gun with his fingers.

"Pow! Right between the eyes."

That was it. The white noise grew to a white hot rage. Every cell in his body was screaming to destroy this man. Matt grabbed Poindexter by the collar with one hand, felt the jagged, bloody edge of the glass shard in his other.

"Right between the eyes?" Matt growled. " _Right between the eyes_?" Matt grabbed the knit mask the man wore over his face and yanked it off. He put his other hand over Poindexter's mouth and pressed his head into the floor. Brought the glass to the man's forehead and started carving.

Poindexter screamed as blood ran through his eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose.

" _Right between the eyes_?" Matt repeated again as he traced ragged, concentric circles into the creature's forehead. And in the center, a single cut. _Bullseye_. Matt raised the glass shard over his head. He could ram it through this man's eyeball so easily. Cut out his tongue. Slit his throat.

Footsteps pounding on the pavement. Up the church steps. Matt rose to his feet, grabbed Elektra, and ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't think I was actually going to kill Elektra off, did you? Hehehehe.
> 
> Matt snapping and carving the bullseye into Poindexter's forehead at the end has got to be one of my favorite parts of this story. It's something he does in the comics (under very different circumstances), and I thought it was the perfect, brutal climax to this scene.


	29. Chapter 29

Matt wasn’t entirely sure how they managed to make it back to his apartment. Muscle memory, maybe. He sure as hell could barely tell where he was going. The ringing in his ear got more deafening by the minute and his head felt like it was about to split open. And his entire body ached from where Poindexter had used him as a wrecking ball to crash through the church’s stained glass window.

But for as awful as he felt, Elektra had it much worse. She was covered in blood, and Matt realized to his horror as he helped her undress, most of it was her own. She’d cut her hands nearly down to the bone with the shard of glass when she’d tried to kill Poindexter, and Poindexter _had_ cut her to the bone when he tried to kill her. Thanks to the protective material of her new jacket, the knife hadn’t gone past her sternum. Matt wouldn’t allow himself to contemplate what would have happened had she been wearing regular clothes.

He was about to call Claire when Elektra stopped him. “Don’t…” she said through chattering teeth. “I don’t…” Had she been in a more coherent state, she would have undoubtedly referenced the night their roles were reversed and he hadn’t allowed her to call for medical assistance. But as she was now, she just choked out a couple of half-sentences that didn’t make much sense on the surface, although to him the meaning was clear: she didn’t want to be around anyone right now. Like an injured cat, she just wanted to slink off and lick her wounds.

Matt wasn’t about to let her leave his place in her current state, but he left her alone after stitching her up. He thought she would have toppled over from exhaustion almost immediately, but she stayed in his living room, staring out the window into the night. It took him a long time to fall asleep - he should have been satisfied that the sniper, Poindexter, was finally under arrest (and was going to stay that way thanks to being found surrounded by four of Fisk’s dead guards), but his mind just kept circling back to the man trying to stab her through the heart. When sleep finally did come for him, Elektra hadn’t moved an inch.

 

\----------

 

It took Matt several moments to realize his phone was ringing (‘Foggy, Foggy,’ it said). The buzzing in his left ear had become a persistent roar, his body felt like he’d been hit by a freight train, but his headache had at least downgraded from migraine to severe hangover levels.

“Two things,” Foggy said when Matt picked up. “One - please tell me you aren’t lying in a pool of blood in your living room again. Two - that asshole gunman is in jail! But you already knew that, didn’t you, buddy?”

Matt went to stick his finger in his bad ear in an effort to hear a little better, but jerked his hand away as a sudden, sharp pain shot through the top of his earlobe.

“Ah-!” he hissed, gingerly probing the area with his fingertips. Blisters. The heat from the gun barrel must have burned him as the gunman pressed it against his head.

“Oh God. _Are_ you lying in a pool of blood? Matt?”

“I’m fine,” Matt croaked out, knowing he sounded anything _but_ fine over the phone. “No permanent damage, anyway.”

“You need me to call someone? Your nurse friend?” Foggy asked.

“No. Hold on.” Matt had to take the phone away from his ear and turn his head to hear Elektra, even though she was less than a foot away from him in the bed. She was asleep, her breathing deep and unlabored, her heartbeat steady and strong.

“No,” Matt said again. “We’re okay.”

“Elektra was there too?” Foggy’s tone shifted to disbelief. “You actually managed to talk her out of killing the guy?”

 _No_ , Matt thought. _I most definitely did not_. “It was more like divine intervention.”

“Well, whatever it was, you did the right thing.”

Matt had to admit it meant a lot to him to hear Foggy say that. “What are they saying on the news?” he asked.

“Not much,” Foggy said. “Just that they’ve arrested the guy they think was responsible for the Natchios and Hoffman shootings.” _He must have confessed_ , Matt thought. Poindexter wasn’t the sort of man who’d break quickly under interrogation, but he _was_ the sort of man who loved to brag about his so-called ‘accomplishments.’

“They said he killed more people last night,” Foggy added.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Fisk’s people.”

“ _Fisk was there_?” Foggy said, clearly surprised. Matt hadn’t mentioned the whole wedding thing to Foggy, knowing his friend would try to talk him out of crashing it.

“He got away before the cops got there,” Matt said.

“Still, one asshole down,” Foggy said. “Not bad, buddy. Not bad.”

“I guess.” Matt wondered if Foggy realized just how good it was to hear him talk like this. It might not be a direct approval - it probably never would - but they’d come a long way from Foggy dumping the Nelson and Murdock sign in the office trash can.

“Does this mean you’re not coming in today?” Foggy asked.

 _Shit_. Matt knew if he wasn’t self-employed, he would have been fired months ago. It really was amazing that the Nelson and Murdock sign had only ended up in the trash can just that once.

“I would,” Matt said, “But I think I really would get hit by a car this time.”

“What? What happened?”

Matt described what Poindexter had done to his ear in the least alarming terms possible, which didn’t prevent Foggy from freaking out on the other end of the line.

“Are you _sure_ I shouldn’t call that nurse? I don’t like the idea of you fumbling around in the dark.”

“Really?” Matt asked. “You seemed okay with it for the past ten years.”.

“I was never okay with it! And, anyway, that was just before you told me about your, you know...whatever it is.”

“Well, Claire can’t do anything about my ear right now,” Matt said. “Can you tell Karen…” Matt had no idea what to tell Karen. She liked to ask way too many questions when it came to his health and well-being (like a good friend should). “Sorry. I know you don’t like lying to her. Just tell her I’m messed up.” That wasn’t a lie.

Foggy told Matt not to worry and to be careful - as if he’d suddenly burn his apartment down now that he was half-deaf - before they got off the phone.

Matt eased himself back into the bed with a groan, again touching the blisters on the side of his ear. _It could have been worse_ , he reminded himself. For starters, his eardrum, in spite of its constant screaming, was still intact. As was his skull. And Elektra’s rib cage.

Matt rolled over onto his stomach and flung an arm over her shoulders, careful to avoid the stitches on her chest, and pulled her close. She didn’t push him away or recoil at his touch, but she didn’t reciprocate the gesture either. She just laid there like she was catatonic, like her mind was somewhere he couldn’t reach.

“It’s okay,” Matt told her. “It’s going to be okay.” For the first time in a long time, he felt like he could maybe, actually, believe that. Fisk was still on the loose and was certainly not going to disappear quietly, but the man with the gun was behind bars where he belonged, and he didn’t have the kind of power and wealth Fisk did to influence the court. He would rot in prison, alone and forgotten.

And Elektra wasn’t a murderer. She had tried and failed, and she could still come back from that. Matt had. Her father was still dead - nothing could change that - but with one of the men responsible locked up, maybe she could at least start to feel some sort of peace, some modicum of solace in justice being served.

‘ _Your father would want you to be happy_ ,’ Eric Slaughter had told her. Matt wasn’t so sure what to think about Hugo Natchios anymore, but he believed that much to be true. Even if he had used her for his own ends, the man loved his daughter. She didn’t need Matt to protect her from the bad guys; she needed him to protect her from herself. ‘ _Just like her mother_.’ It didn’t matter that Matt didn’t know the particulars of her mother’s death - he knew the outcome, and Eric Slaughter’s warning was clear.

Matt realized Elektra was finally speaking when he felt sound vibrating in her chest.

“What?” He turned his head, burying his bad ear in the sheets and mattress in spite of the stinging pain of his blisters. It helped his hearing - a little.

“I said I don’t think I can cry anymore.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good...I think.” Was it? Matt Murdock certainly knew all about burying his emotions; sometimes that helped you move forward. And then sometimes you snapped and shoved a guy out a window.

Elektra wrapped one of her arms around Matt’s back. Her heavily bandaged hands made her touch stiff and awkward, but it felt good to him. He’d thought there was a good chance she was going to wake up hating him for not finishing Poindexter off.

“I’m scared, Matt,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“The guy’s not going to walk, Elektra.” There was no way he could. Right?

“No, not that. I…” She swallowed. “I’m scared that I’ll always feel _hollow_ like this.”

More than anything, he wanted her to stop hurting. And he knew, even if he had murdered Fisk and Poindexter last night, it wouldn’t fill the void her father’s death had left behind.

“Nothing can erase what they took from you,” Matt said. “But you get to choose to be happy. Your choice. Not theirs.” He ran his fingers over her tangled curls. “After I lost my sight, after my father died, the old man told me to ‘reshuffle the cards I’d been dealt.’ He was a miserable old bastard, but sometimes he gave good advice.”

“I’m not like you, though.”

“No,” Matt said. “You’re a lot cooler than me.” He quickly added, “Sorry, bad time for a joke.”

“I’m not _good_ like you,” she said.

Matt sighed. He didn’t understand where she’d gotten the idea to put him on a pedestal, and certainly the last few months should have dispelled any illusions she had about his character.

“I don’t think a good man would need to hide behind a mask.” There. He’d finally said it out loud. “I think we both know I’m not just doing this to help other people.” He’d known that from the start, from the first time he felt that asshole’s bones give way to his fists, how good it felt to be the one in control, to no longer be the scared little boy touching his father’s dead, cold face.

No matter how many bad people he hurt, how many criminals he took off the streets, part of him would always be that boy, just like part of Elektra would always be the woman staring at the hole in her father’s head in the morgue.

“You’re nothing like _him_ , Matt.” Fisk. She didn’t have to say who she was talking about. “I felt it that night at the party, and last night too. There’s something about him that’s just....”

Matt knew exactly what she was trying to say. “He thinks he’s in the right. He thinks he’s the hero.” The sniper was cruel and crazy, but at least he knew it. But Fisk...for every life he’d taken, Matt was sure he’d felt - wholeheartedly believed - it was justified. And that was exactly why Matt was terrified of turning into him.

Their companionable, if contemplative, silence was broken by the ringing of Elektra’s phone. Even though it was only on the far side of the bed, it sounded like it was coming from underwater to Matt’s fractured hearing. For a moment, he thought she was just going to let it ring, but then she rolled out from underneath him with a long groan (that he felt more than heard) and picked up. With only one good ear and her back to him, there was no way for him to gracefully eavesdrop, so Matt slid across the mattress until he was alongside her, good ear facing her phone.

“...Detective Brubaker with Homicide,” a male voice on the other end of the line said. Both Matt and Elektra already knew why he was calling. “We’ve arrested the man we believe is responsible for shooting your father.”

Elektra was either too injured or too numb to feign surprise. “Who is he?” She asked, her tone flat.

 _Other than a maniac_ , Matt thought.

“Lester Wilkerson,” the detective said. “Although we believe he’s been using the name Poindexter lately. Either of those names mean anything to you?”

“No.” She fingered the stitches between her breasts, wincing.

“Well, he’s confessed to your father’s murder, and preliminary testing on the evidence we confiscated from his motel room seems to corroborate his story. But he claims your father was a random target. A thrill kill.”

“That’s bullshit,” Elektra hissed.

Matt cursed under his breath as well. The man’s behavior last night clearly indicated he owed no real loyalty to Fisk, nor had much fear of his reprisal. So why lie? Because he didn’t want to share the spotlight?

“Yes,” the detective said. “I agree. We believe he was hired. He might be more willing to talk if we can work out some kind of deal-”

“No.” Elektra’s voice wasn’t loud, but it was deadly serious. “No fucking deals. No way.”

“Well, Miss Natchios, we like to respect the family’s wishes, but-”

“I said _no_ ,” Elektra growled. “The man who killed my father doesn’t get a _deal_.”

Matt nudged her arm. “Ask him about last night,” he whispered. Had Poindexter - or Wilkerson, or whatever his name was - mentioned Elektra at the church? If so, she was going to have some explaining to do.

“How did you find him?” Elektra asked the detective on the phone.

“He apparently tried to attack a couple during their wedding last night. He shot and killed several people at the scene. According to the priest officiating and the bride and groom, he and that masked vigilante basically just started a fight in the middle of this church while these people were getting married.”

Elektra paused for a long time, and then made a noncommittal sound.

“We’re still gathering evidence in your father’s case,” the detective went on. “We want to build as strong a case as possible against this guy. But we’ve already got him behind bars for these killings last night, so you don’t have to worry about him being out on the streets anymore.”

Elektra and the detective went over a few more things before getting off the phone. As soon as she hung up, she turned to Matt.

“Why didn’t Fisk tell the cops I was there? Why didn’t the priest?”

“Well, I’m sure the priest said whatever Fisk told him to,” Matt said, cradling his ear. “As for Fisk, well…” Matt thought for a moment. Any answer he could come up with wasn’t comforting. “You know too much. And you still have something he wants.”

“The ledgers,” Elektra said. Matt nodded, then flopped onto his back with a groan.

All he ever wanted to do was keep her safe, keep her far from Fisk's notice. Even with the sniper behind bars, it didn’t mean she wasn’t squarely in Fisk’s crosshairs now. And worst of all, Matt knew what she was thinking. _Come and get it_. Fisk had thrown her across that church like a rag doll, and still she wanted to confront him. And, of course, with Wilkerson keeping his mouth shut, it meant there was no legal alternative Matt could convince her was the right - and safer - course of action.

“God dammit,” he mumbled to himself.

“Don’t you dare tell me to take that deal,” Elektra said.

Matt shook his head. He would never ask her to do something like that. He knew how it felt. “I don’t think he’d talk anyway,” he said. “He likes being the center of attention.”

 

\----------

 

When Matt got up to use the bathroom, he realized he was in a lot worse shape than he thought. It was bad enough that he couldn’t hear anything on his left side, but the ringing in his ear was actively messing with his sense of perception and balance. It was kind of like being drunk, only much worse.

He reached out to where he thought the door handle would be, but his fingers only found the wall. He felt around until he found the doorway about a foot to his left; if Elektra noticed his fumbling, she didn’t say anything (at least that he could hear). _Shit_ , Matt thought. He’d take the piercing pain of broken ribs over this any day. At least he was reasonably sure he managed to urinate _in_ the toilet bowl.

Matt’s plan to spend the rest of the day in bed - a plan Elektra seemed to be completely on board with - was dashed by a pounding on his front door and the sound of Karen calling his phone.

“We brought you lunch,” Karen said when Matt picked up the call. “Foggy told me you were hurt.”

Matt winced as he sat up and the room immediately started wobbling. “Give me a minute,” he told Karen.

Elektra grabbed his arm as he began to ease himself out of bed. “I don’t really feel like talking to anyone right now.”

Matt nodded and shut the bedroom door behind him once he managed to find a shirt. He anchored himself to the hallway wall so he didn’t get lost on the way to his front door.

“Hey, buddy.” There was a hesitation in Foggy’s voice, and Matt guessed his friend was scrutinizing him for injuries. Aside from his ear and a few cuts on his hands, the rest of his bruises were concealed beneath his clothing.

“So what happened, exactly?” Karen asked as she and Foggy hung up their coats. “Foggy just said your ear was all messed up.”

“Uh…” Matt’s hand shot up to his injured ear, feeling the blisters there. He quickly pulled his hair over to cover them. “We went to some live music thing and the speakers blew out when I was standing next to one of them.”

“Bastards,” Foggy said, clearly relieved that he wasn’t the one who had to bullshit Karen this time.

“Well, Elektra just about murdered the guy in charge of it,” Matt said, “So it probably won’t happen again.” _And I branded the monster for life_.

Karen started to ask about Elektra when Foggy suddenly cut her off. “Uh, buddy? That’s your couch. That you’re about to run into right now.”

“What?” Matt put his hands out, and sure enough, there were the back of his couch cushions. “Somebody moved that,” he said.

“Sure they did, pal.” Foggy quickly ushered Matt over to a chair at the kitchen table. At least his coworkers knew he wasn’t just blowing them off to play hooky.

Matt could smell the savory scents of Chinese takeout before he answered the door, but his stomach began growling as Karen took the cartons out of the bag. Both Foggy and Karen insisted Matt stay seated as they moved about his kitchen gathering utensils, plates, and drinks. If it had been anyone else, this would've been downright humiliating, but it wasn’t the first time either of them had taken care of him after a night in the mask.

“I thought Elektra was here?” Karen asked as she handed Matt his plate.

Matt jerked his thumb toward the back of the apartment. “She’s not really in the mood for company.”

“I thought she’d be happy with that guy behind bars,” Foggy said as he took his seat.

“Well…” _She tried to kill him last night_. “Evidently the cops are considering cutting him some kind of deal.”

Karen gasped. “You mean...to catch Fisk?”

Matt nodded.

“Jesus,” Foggy said with a note of sympathy in his voice Matt had never heard directed at Elektra before. “Talk about one shitty compromise.”

“Yeah.” Matt scarfed down his lunch and Karen doled him out another helping like she was his mom. He ate his second helping at a more normal, polite pace as they speculated on exactly what the District Attorney was going to do with the sniper who had been terrorizing Hell’s Kitchen all Fall.

“You guys remember how I got all that stuff from Mrs. Urich, right?” Karen asked. “Well, I’ve been going back through it-”

“Karen, do you seriously sit around your apartment at night looking at pictures of dead body parts?” Foggy asked. “Because I am genuinely starting to get concerned.”

“Seconded,” Matt said.

Karen scoffed. “Come on, you guys. This is important.”

Matt was pretty sure you’d have more luck trying to snatch a bone away from a bulldog than getting Karen Page to back down.

“So, evidently, that dead body - or, uh, body parts - from Cranston’s files: the cops think that was Rigoletto.”

“The mafia guy?” Foggy asked.

“Yeah,” Karen said. “The DNA sample they collected from the body conveniently disappeared...right around the time we know Fisk started paying guys on the force. What I’m trying to figure out is why Fisk would want to take out Rigoletto.”

“Competition?” Foggy said. “The guy used to be a mafia don. Some people don’t learn anything even after twenty-five years in prison.”

“No,” Matt said. He didn’t want to tell Karen and Foggy about Elektra’s dad’s criminal past - that was her secret to tell - but he had to tell them what they’d found out from Eric Slaughter. “Fisk _worked_ for Rigoletto.”

“How do you know that?” Karen asked.

“Yes, Matt. How _do_ you know that?” Foggy asked a little more pointedly than Karen.

“Elektra’s dad’s friend told us. He said back when they both worked on the docks, they used to see young Wilson Fisk come to collect from people who owed Rigoletto money.”

“Well, that’s it then!” Karen exclaimed. “That’s the connection! So Fisk murdered Rigoletto when he got out as part of burying his past.”

“Good Lord.” Foggy took a gulp from his drink. “Is there anybody this guy hasn’t just tossed aside when he’s done with them?”

“It doesn’t seem that way,” Matt said. Which meant it was only a matter of time until he discarded his current partners in a similar manner. That gave Matt an idea. “Karen, can you take all those photos into work and make a bunch of copies?”

“Um…” Karen paused. “I thought you guys didn’t want me looking at them anymore?”

“We don’t,” Foggy said. “And I hate to break this to you, buddy, but our copier at work isn’t that great.”

“Oh.”

“Also, please explain.” Foggy said.

“Well,” Matt said. “We know how Fisk operates. He always gets others to do his dirty work. Now that he’s out, he must be looking for new partners.” Matt declined mentioning what he knew about Fisk’s partnership with the Enforcers; he didn’t think Karen would buy that he’d just heard that from someone on the street. “I think we should let everyone know what happens to you after you get into bed with Fisk.”

“Ben had stuff on the Russians too,” Karen said, evidently already liking the idea.

Foggy was a little more practical. “Okay, first of all -” Matt thought he must be pointing at Karen, but his sense of where Foggy and Karen were sitting seemed to bounce from one end of the room to the other. “ _You_ are not going into Kinko’s with a bunch of pictures of dead guys. And you - are we just supposed to flier all the gang corners with this stuff like posters of a missing dog? I get what you’re saying here, but I don’t know how we’re supposed to make this work.”

“The mask,” Karen suddenly said. “Daredevil. We give it to Daredevil.”

Matt was having a harder time than usual gauging Foggy’s reaction with his bad ear, but he was almost certain it had to be something between a cringe and intense irritation.

“Okay,” Foggy said sarcastically. “Let me just fire up the Bat Signal.”

 _Oh God_ , Matt thought. _Not you too_.

“He came to you before,” Karen said defensively. “And Ben, last year. And he saved me. He’s got just as much interest as we do in keeping Fisk from establishing another foothold in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“It’s a thought,” Matt said, not wanting to have to continue to have to bullshit Karen any longer than necessary.

“We have the information,” Karen said. “It might not be enough to give to a reporter to print, but if it makes any of these guys think twice, that’s one less foot soldier for Fisk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, we're getting pretty close to the end of this tale! There are maybe 4-6 chapters left, depending on how I decide to break things up. Thank you for coming along on Captain Zajjy's wild ride :3


	30. Chapter 30

Once she was sure Matt’s ear was on the mend, Elektra ignored his pleas to allow him to babysit her twenty-four hours a day. Fisk still wanted her father’s ledgers, and that made her a target for his wroth. _Come and get me, you bastard_. _I’m waiting for you_.

The wounds to her hands stung with every interaction, a constant reminder of how it felt to stab her father’s shooter over and over. And it had felt _right_. For the first time since her father died, she hadn’t felt like a victim, like a stupid, useless girl chasing shadows. Her world had gone red, and there was only rage. No pain. But now it was back, gnawing at her like a desperate hunger. _It hurts, Daddy_.

Matt told her she had to choose to be happy. Choose to swallow the pain. But she wasn’t strong like him. She couldn’t just pretend like everything was fine, not while Fisk was still alive.

While Matt was at work (he’d wanted her to come in with her, which was just about the dumbest thing she’d ever heard), Elektra went into her own office, and paid Eric Slaughter a visit. Wallenquist sneered as she let herself in and she gave him the finger.

“Elektra.” Slaughter looked up from his laptop.

“Fisk's hitman is in jail,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning against a wall. “He can’t hurt you or your wife anymore.”

Slaughter’s gaze drifted to the bandages on her hands. “What happened to you?”

Elektra ignored him. “Stop the shipments. _Please_.” She couldn’t keep the desperation from her voice. “I don’t care what my dad did to start this company. He worked so hard. He built this from nothing.” Elektra motioned around the office. “I know I don’t know anything about the business, but I know that it was important to him. That he was proud of what he made. Please. Please, don’t let Fisk and all his bullshit destroy my father’s legacy.”

“Elektra.” Slaughter closed his laptop and steepled his arms atop the case. “You’re right. Your father loved this company. But there’s nothing in this world he loved more than you.”

Elektra didn’t know why that hurt, but it did. But like she’d told Matt, she couldn’t cry anymore. Her tears had run dry.

“What do you think he’d say if he was here right now, and saw you all bandaged up like that? Do you think he’d be proud? Do you think he’d be happy that you’re putting yourself in danger for him?”

“He’s not here,” Elektra said through clenched teeth. “He’s not here, and he’s never coming back.”

Slaughter sighed. “I’ve already started working on severing the company’s ties with Wilson Fisk. My wife and I will be taking another ‘vacation’ after the final shipment comes in on Monday. You ought to think about doing the same.”

Elektra physically recoiled at the suggestion. _Run away_? Never.

Slaughter met her eyes. “You’re so concerned about saving your father’s legacy. Don’t forget the most important part of that legacy is _you_.”

 

\----------

 

Three days later and Matt’s ear was almost back to normal. He was still experiencing an intermittent buzzing, but he was no longer running into his own furniture. After work that day, he and Foggy took a fat stack of (allegedly) gruesome photographs back to Matt’s apartment, telling Karen they were going to see Brett Mahoney for suggestions on how to contact the man in the mask.

As he sat on Matt’s couch, Foggy sighed heavily for maybe the tenth time that day.

Pulling on the pants of the Daredevil suit, Matt asked, “Are you going to tell me what’s eating you, or do I have to guess? You’ve been in a funk all day.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve reached my limit,” Foggy said.

Matt came out of his bedroom, mask in hand. “Limit for what?”

“For lying,” Foggy said. “To Karen. She’s been talking about the mask all week, and all damn week I’ve had to sit there and smile and play dumb. I don’t think I can take it anymore.”

Foggy wasn’t exaggerating. It seemed like any time they weren’t talking about actual work, Karen had another thought on how to contact Daredevil or how to help him get back at Fisk. It was awkward, to say the least.

Matt sat down beside Foggy and pulled on his boots. “You want to tell Karen I’m Daredevil? Do you really think she’s going to take that news well?”

“I mean, she obviously thinks Daredevil’s the shit. Maybe she’ll think it’s cool?” The hesitation in Foggy’s voice made it clear that he knew how unlikely that was.

“And she’ll think it’s cool that we’ve been lying to her for a year?” Over a year, in Matt’s case.

“No, God dammit,” Foggy said. “It’s _not_ cool. Which is why I can’t do it anymore. At least if she knows, I can stop feeling guilty and put all that energy into kissing her ass.”

“When you found me... I’ll be honest. Part of me was relieved. Obviously, I’d wished you’d taken the news better, but it felt good to at least have it all out in the open,” Matt said.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. And I eventually got over it, right? And Karen’s always been a bigger Daredevil fan than me, so she’ll probably get over it too, right? Right?”

Get over him being Daredevil? Probably. Get over the fact that _both_ he and Foggy had kept the truth from her, had gone behind her back to keep Matt’s secret? That was going to sting. ‘Page’ might not have been on the Nelson and Murdock sign, but they were a three-person team.

Matt turned toward his friend. “Do you think you can wait until this Fisk thing is resolved? Every time his name comes up, she-”

“I know,” Foggy said miserably. “She goes about as white as a sheet. I think she’s scared he’s still going to try to finish what he started with her.”

Matt grimaced. “That’s a valid concern, when it comes to Fisk. I just don’t want to stress her out anymore than she already is.” _And I still need her help_. He felt selfish for thinking that, but it was true. When it came to finding dirt on Wilson Fisk, she was better than any NYPD detective.

“Alright.” Foggy still sounded miserable. And why wouldn’t he be? He’d never came out and admitted it, but Matt knew Foggy’s feelings toward Karen weren’t entirely platonic. And Matt had forced him to lie to her. _You’re a real bastard sometimes, Murdock_.

Matt got up and picked up the stack of photos, secured in a thick envelope that he’d made Foggy address simply to Dan, from the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

“You gonna have dinner ready for me when I get home?” Matt asked Foggy playfully, trying to lighten the mood.

Foggy looked up from something on his phone - maybe getting a head start on the Karen ass-kissing - and said, “Do I need to remind you not to engage them? Just drop the stuff off and come back here. If you promise to do that, I will absolutely get you dinner.”

Matt held up his right hand. “Scout’s honor.” Elektra would have liked that.

As he took to the rooftops, his mind drifted to her. She’d been distant ever since that night at the church, and even though it wasn’t his fault this time, that didn’t make him like it any more. _She tried to kill a guy_ , Matt reminded himself. And the way Wilkerson - or whatever his name was - had laughed as he talked about shooting her father, talked about putting a bullet in her... it still made Matt’s blood boil. If he was supposed to feel some kind of guilt or remorse about carving up the sniper’s face - well, he didn’t. In fact, he was glad he did. Part of him wished he’d done something more, something worse.

Matt forced that part of him to quiet as he neared the Enforcer rowhouse. He’d promised Foggy not to fight them, and as good as it might feel to crack a few drug dealer’s skulls, it would feel better to keep his promise to his friend.

Even with Darnell dead, the Enforcers continued to convene at his aunt’s rowhouse to drink and smoke pot and do whatever else it was that gang members did in their free time. Matt suspected the old woman was hooked on their product along with most of the impoverished in Hell’s Kitchen.

Matt crept along the roof of the rowhouse. He could leave the package on the doorstep and be done with it, but while he was here, he figured he might as well up the intimidation factor - payback for trying to kill him a few weeks ago.

 _Don’t worry, Foggy_ , he thought, saying it to the saintly Franklin Nelson looming over his shoulder. _I won’t engage them_.

Instead, he picked the lock on a second story window - they’d started locking up now - a recently acquired skill Elektra had shown him. She’d evidently taught herself so she could take her father’s vintage sports car for a spin back when she was fifteen.

He wasn’t nearly as adept as she was, but after a bit of fiddling, he managed to get the lock to click open. He eased the frame open and slipped inside.

Aside from locking things, the Enforcers remained lax about their security. The old woman was in a bedroom to Matt’s left - asleep or high, he wasn’t quite sure which - and a few of the guys were down in the living room watching television.

Matt snuck around the hallway and into the other, empty bedroom. If this had once been Darnell’s room, his buddies didn’t seem terribly concerned with preserving his memory. Dirty clothes were scattered all over the floor and the stale stink of sweat and cigarette smoke hung in the air. Several guns in various states of dismantling were laid out on the bed along with a roll of duct tape, as if someone had been trying to cobble together some kind of super weapon out of disparate parts.

Matt had planned on laying all the photos out on the bed, but the tape gave him an idea. Tearing off strips between his teeth, he quickly papered the walls with graphic photographs of Fisk’s former associates and victims like a serial killer’s tableau. Photos made that much creepier, according to Foggy, by the grainy effect of running them through their junky copier at work.

Matt couldn’t feel the actual content of images by touch, but he could at least tell which side of the paper they’d been printed on (hanging them face down really would’ve ruined the effect he was going for). He was probably putting a few of them up sideways, but that couldn’t be helped. When he was done, he taped up the envelope right in the center. _To Dan, from the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen_. If that didn’t get their attention, he wasn’t sure what would.

Right as he was about to go back out the window, a phone rang downstairs. Matt paused, crouching on the sill, and listened. The voice of the man who answered was familiar - it wasn’t Dan or one of his inner circle, but it must have been one of the assholes who’d participated in Daredevil’s beating during their last encounter.

“Moving it to 54th and 10th. Got it, boss,” the man said. “Yup. I’ll take care of it.”

“Shit,” another man said when the first hung up the phone. “He’s moving the stash house _again_?”

“He said someone’s been hanging around the old one,” the first man said.

“God damn. I’m getting pretty tired of driving all over the fucking neighborhood. Fancy’s too paranoid, man.”

“You wanna say that to his face?”

The two men shared a laugh as Matt slipped back out the window. The location to the Enforcers’ stash house. They might as well have handed him their arrest warrants gift-wrapped.

 

\----------

 

Elektra winced as Matt pressed a cloth soaked in disinfectant into the cuts on her palm. The wounds were still red and angry - and had started to itch on top of aching - but the swelling was gone, and she could almost make a fist if she gritted her teeth.

“Let me see,” Matt said, running his fingers over the stitches in the center of her chest. _That’s going to leave a scar_ , she thought bitterly.

“Dammit,” she said when Matt set about cleaning it. A sharp, stinging sensation radiated from her sternum to the pit of her stomach.

“Sorry,” Matt said.

Elektra took a deep breath as he pulled his hand away. The pain receded slowly. “Don’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault.”

Matt cocked a smile. “I’m Catholic.” A thoughtful expression came over his face as he placed a clean bandage over her wound. “I need your help.”

“With?”

“With getting the drug dealers out of Hell’s Kitchen for good.”

Elektra sighed. “Haven’t we already been over this?”

“I know, I know,” Matt said. His unfocused gaze made it look like he was imploring something over her left shoulder. “I’m not going to stop the drug trade. But I’ve got a tip on the location of the guys Fisk is using to sell the drugs he’s smuggling through your dad’s company.”

“And you haven’t given this tip to the cops because...?” _You need somebody to hit_?

“The last time we called in a tip, the police didn’t exactly do a great job," Matt said with a frown. "These are the same guys who tried to murder me at that construction site, by the way. And at least one of them called you the c-word and threw you through a wall.”

‘The c-word.’ _Are you ten_? “Matt, are you trying to appeal to my vengeful side?”

Again, he grinned at her. “Is it working?”

 _Of course it’s working_. Those assholes had _shot_ him, for God’s sake. “Then I need your help too.”

“Okay?” Matt said the word more as a question than an affirmation.

“The company’s done running drugs.”

Matt sat up. “Well, that’s good news.”

“But there’s still one last shipment coming in.” Elektra assumed it had already been on the way when Slaughter decided to pull the plug. “I don’t want it going out on the streets.”

Matt was smiling at her, and looked like he was about to start laughing.

“What?”

“See? You do care. Admit it.” He squeezed her playfully on the shoulder.

“If you’re taking these guys out, I don’t want a truck full of drugs that can possibly be traced back to my dad’s company just sitting around.”

“Sure, sure.”

“It comes in on Monday.”

“Mm hmm.” Matt was still grinning at her like some kind of idiot.

Elektra’s first instinct, which was to smack him despite her injured hands, quickly gave way to a profound sense of sadness. Not the gnawing pain left from grieving her father, but something dull and heavy. How many more nights would they have like this, sitting on his couch while he teased her? She knew what she had to do to Fisk, and after trying to stab Wilkerson, she knew she was capable of it. And she knew that meant losing Matt forever, even if he needed Fisk gone as much as she did.

Ignoring the pain in her chest, Elektra threw her arms around Matt’s neck. His hands immediately drifted down her back toward her underwear, but stopped when he realized that wasn’t what she was getting at.

“What’s wrong?” He asked quietly.

Elektra shook her head into his shoulder. She inhaled deeply, trying to fix his scent in her mind, trying to etch the warmth of his body as he held her into her memory forever.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said. _Not tonight_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT UPDATES: I will be in Japan May 3-11! (unlike Elektra, I'm just a dumb tourist who knows how to say maybe 10 things in Japanese.) I'm taking my laptop with me and will definitely continue to post updates on this story while I'm there, but due to the time difference (13 hours ahead of my usual time zone) and the fact that I'll really only be in the hotel early in the morning and at night, the timing for updates will probably be a bit off.
> 
> If you're at all interested in following my trip (or just want to keep an eye out for writing updates), I'll be doing some photo dumps/blogging about it on [tumblr](http://captain-zajjy.tumblr.com/).


	31. Chapter 31

Elektra recognized the warehouse right away. It was the one where the Enforcer leader had met with - and promptly dismissed - Wallenquist, the night Matt had followed her and she’d kicked him in the ribs. She was only a little sorry about that.

“What are they doing?” Elektra asked Matt for the tenth time. He held up a hand, motioning for her to be quiet while he listened in on whatever was going on in the warehouse next door. She sighed, pretending to be patient. She couldn’t really talk to him when he was trying to concentrate like this, so she ended up examining the various buttons and levers on their dilapidated rental car.

They’d made a very reluctant Foggy rent the car for them the day before; if all went as planned, he could return it tomorrow. And if it didn’t, he could report it as stolen in the morning.

Matt had surmised that the gang probably took the containers from the company ship to this warehouse, where they separated the drugs from the legitimate cargo, and then sent the heroin off to the stash house. Their plan was to ambush the driver, dump the drugs in the river, and then she would use the truck to attract the attention of the cops toward the stash house while Matt ‘subdued’ the gang members inside. Elektra knew that was Matt-Catholic-speak for ‘beating them bloody.’

They sat in the car half a block down from the warehouse, windows open for Matt to do whatever it was he did. Elektra shivered as she waited; the bulletproof clothing Matt had given her was actually fairly warm, but the sniper had broken the zipper with her blade, so she could only wear it half-closed. Even wearing a black turtleneck underneath, the cold winter wind still cut right through her.

“Okay,” Matt said suddenly. “They’re coming.”

A few moments later, a large delivery truck trundled out of the warehouse lot. The truck was old and rickety, and though it may have begun its life as white, it was now the color of dirty snow. She’d have no problem outrunning and outmaneuvering it, even in her shitty rental.

Elektra turned the headlights on and drove slowly at first - the streetlamps were too numerous for her not to be spotted, and driving around with the lights off was pretty damn suspicious. Still, she was sure these guys were wary of being tailed, and they’d figure it out sooner or later. Once she made her move, that was it - she and Matt had thirty seconds, maybe a minute, to take them out before they alerted their boss as to what was going on.

The truck turned down a one way street, and Elektra followed several hundred feet behind. Ahead of them, she could see at least a full block with both lanes clear, before one of them abruptly ran out at a parked station wagon. She hoped Foggy had remembered to get full insurance on the car.

“You remember where the brake is, right?” Elektra asked Matt.

He took her cue and put on his mask, shifting from the passenger seat to the back of the car. “Yea - wait a minute... Yeah, I do.” That didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but it was now or never.

Elektra stomped on the gas.

The engine roared - not the heavy, proud lion’s roar of her Porsche, but the whiny complaint of someone being forced to do something they didn’t want to. The little car shot forward until she was alongside the truck’s passenger side, two very alarmed faces peering at her from the cab. Matt was in the backseat with the window down, perched and ready to jump, but the truck tried to speed away. Elektra urged the little car forward to match its pace.

“ _Go_!” She shouted, swerving as close as she could get to the truck without swiping it. Matt slid out of the window and leapt. Elektra silently prayed that his senses were as good as he said they were.

Matt wrapped both arms around the large, passenger side mirror, feet balanced on the footplate alongside the door. With one arm still secured to the mirror, he first reached for the door handle (locked) and then began to slam his elbow into the passenger window.

The truck driver, seemingly unconcerned with the state of his cargo, began to swerve wildly in an attempt to shake Matt off, slamming on the brake, then speeding up abruptly. Ignoring the cuts on her palms, Elektra cut hard on the wheel, only narrowly avoiding crushing Matt between the truck and her car, while he desperately clung to the truck’s mirror.

One of the guys in the cab then did them a huge favor by attempting to shoot someone - Matt or her - through the passenger side window. He missed his targets, but blew a large hole in the glass, which Matt immediately thrust his fist through. Elektra caught sight of Matt shoving the man’s head onto the dashboard before she slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the car parked at the end of the block.

 _Alright, Matt_ , she thought, as she grabbed her gun and hopped out of the car, its tires smoking in the cold night air. _It’s your show now_.

The truck continued down the next block, swerving erratically. Two gun shots rang out in quick succession, the muzzle flash briefly illuminating a red, horned silhouette in the cab. _Oh, God_. Elektra flicked the safety off her gun and sprinted toward the truck. The plan was to tie these two up, but if they’d shot Matt, she really didn’t care if his suit was technically bulletproof.

With a screech and one final swerve, the truck suddenly came to a halt. Elektra quickly caught up with it and yanked the driver’s side door open. Matt sat in the driver’s seat, his body six inches from the steering column, both hands gripping the top of the wheel like an old granny. Two men were slumped unconscious next to him in the seat and there were several holes in the windshield.

“I found the brake,” Matt said. “But how do I put it in park?”

 

\----------

 

Elektra stood on the end of one of the docks on a row of deserted piers. She sliced into one of the heroin bricks with a knife and dumped the caramel-colored powder into the frigid waters of the Hudson. Far worse things had been dumped in here than several dozen kilos of heroin.

Matt had tied up both the driver and his accomplice - who was semi-conscious at best, blood still dripping from his broken nose - and placed both of them in the back of the truck.

“You know how much money you’re throwing away?” The driver said to Elektra when she went to grab another package. “You might as well be flushin’ hundreds down the toilet, baby.”

“Shut up,” Matt growled.

As Elektra had suspected, the gang members only seemed marginally concerned with Daredevil’s fists. Even this driver, tied up and with his friend slumped bloody and concussed next to him, didn’t seem fazed by the warning in Matt’s tone. And why would he be? If their plan for the evening fell through, if the Enforcer boss somehow slipped through Matt’s fingers or managed to weasel his way out of jail, these two goons were going to pay for losing this shipment. In blood. Elektra didn’t particularly care what happened to either of them, but she also couldn’t fault the man for trying to talk his way out of the shit he knew he was waist-deep in.

“Baby, what’re you doin’ with this psycho? Huh?” The driver cocked his head at Matt. “You wanna live dangerously, we can live dangerously, girl. I’ll even fuck you with the lights on. I bet this cracker ass-”

Matt tore the driver’s bandana off his head and shoved it into his mouth. He continued to make muffled attempts at conversation around it.

Elektra raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you didn’t hit him for that.”

“Well,” Matt said through clenched teeth. “The night’s still young.”

They had disposed of nearly two-thirds of the bricks when a phone began to ring. Matt fished it out of the concussed man’s pants pocket and tossed it to Elektra.

“It says it’s from ‘Fancy,’” she said to Matt.

“That’s their boss, Dan. He probably wants to know where they are.”

With her free hand, Elektra drew her gun and placed it at the conscious man’s temple. “Tell him the ship was late. Tell him you’ll be there in twenty minutes. Say anything else and I’ll blow your brains out.” Never mind that her gun was still jammed from the splinter the sniper had thrown down the barrel that night at the church.

The man nodded, the first look of something resembling fear crossing his face since they’d tied him up. But was it fear of her or his boss? Before Elektra took the gag out of his mouth, she added, “Say what I told you, and we’ll cut you loose when we’re done.”

Matt opened his mouth to protest, but stopped when Elektra slid her thumb across the screen to answer the call.

“Hey, Fancy, uh…” The driver was cut off by screaming and shouting on the other end of the line.

“Ditch the truck, boys!” Dan sounded panicked. Did he know Matt was on his way to the stash house? More shouts, a low, mechanical whine, and gunfire seemed to answer that question. “Ditch the truck and get your asses over here! We got some kind of _Friday the 13th_ motherfucker trying to kill us over here!”

Elektra exchanged a glance with the driver, who looked every bit as bewildered as she felt. She jerked her head at the phone, indicating for him to play along.

“Uh...sure thing, boss. We, uh….we’re ditching the truck now.”

“Jesus Christ, Jonesy, get over here now! This fucker-” There was another mechanical droning, much louder than before, and then the line went dead.

 _What the hell_? Had some of the gang's rivals determined the location of the stash house too?

The driver looked at her imploringly, his eyes now wide and terrified. “You ain’t gonna make me go over there, are you, baby? You’ll cut me loose, right?”

“Uh…”

Elektra looked up at Matt, who was already in the process of taking off. “You finish up here,” he said. Then he sprinted down the dock toward the street.

“M-” she almost yelled his name in frustration, then caught herself. “Motherfucker,” she muttered.

So, the Enforcers were being attacked by a rival gang or something. Was this really a bad thing? Something where Daredevil needed to intervene? _Just let them take each other out_ , she thought. _Save you the trouble_.

But Matt was already gone. This was the part of him, the part of putting on the mask, that she didn’t understand. Perhaps, with all the gunshots and whatever else they'd heard on the other end of the line, she should have been worried about his physical safety, but that wasn’t what scared her. That he couldn’t just let the natural selection of the criminal world take its course, that _he_ had to be the one to stop them - _that_ was what frightened her.

“Offer still stands, baby,” the driver said. He was still nervous, but seemed emboldened now that Daredevil had run off. “To fuck you wi-”

Elektra shoved the gag back in his mouth, pulled a crushed pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, and lit one up.

 

\----------

 

As soon as Matt had heard that buzzing, droning sound on the other end of the line, he knew. He didn’t particularly care what befell the Enforcers, but they couldn’t squeal on Fisk if they were in pieces. And he _did_ care what befell Melvin Potter - Matt doubted the man was capable of thinking rationally on his best days; torn up as he was over Betsy’s death, he certainly wasn’t considering the repercussions for murdering a bunch of gang members with a chainsaw in revenge.

Matt could smell blood a block away from the stash house, hear shouts and gunshots and spinning blades. He certainly wasn’t going to need Elektra to lead the police to the house anymore. _Please, don’t let me be too late_ , he thought.

Potter hadn’t bothered to try to sneak up on the place. What was left of the front door remained on its hinges, a massive, splintered hole cut out of the middle. The Enforcers would be armed to the teeth to protect their stash, but this was Potter, not a rival gang. Matt was sure the tailor had constructed an outfit for himself that was every bit as bulletproof as Daredevil’s suit.

Rather than wading right into the middle of the fray - and unsure just how well his costume would stand up to both chainsaw _and_ bullets - Matt ran around to the back of the building and kicked in a window.

Two Enforcers whirled around on him, guns drawn. A third huddled in the corner, clutching his bloody stump where his right hand should have been.

“Jesus Christ!” Matt recognized the voice immediately as belonging to the Enforcer’s boss, Fancy Dan. “Please tell me you’re here for him!” Dan jerked his pistol toward the bedroom door, barricaded by a haphazard stack of furniture. Beyond it, out in the hallway, Matt heard the _whir_ of the chainsaw hacking through more furniture meant to keep him out, and beneath that, Melvin Potter’s quiet sobbing.

“I’m here for him,” Matt said. “I’m here to make sure he doesn’t become a murderer.”

“Psh.” Dan paced around the small room, pistol still in hand.

“How many times did you shoot him, boss?” The other uninjured man asked. Matt thought it might be the same guy who never stopped yapping at every Enforcer gathering. “I know I tagged him at least twice.”

“He’s wearing kevlar,” Matt said. “Bullets won’t stop him. Who else is in the house?” He was having a difficult time making out individual heartbeats over the constant whine of the chainsaw.

“Couple bitches upstairs,” the Mouth said.

“You mean women,” Matt said flatly.

“Yes, women,” Dan snapped. “Jesus Christ, man. Freddy Krueger don’t seem too interested in them.”

“You killed his friend,” Matt said, motioning toward Potter out in the hallway. The cracking sound of splitting wood meant he was getting closer.

“Who?”

“Betsy.”

“Who?” Dan repeated again.

 _God damn you_ , Matt thought. _Do people’s lives mean so little_? “Betsy Beatty. She was a social worker. She looked after him. And that’s why Fisk wanted her dead.”

“That lady?” Dan swore under his breath. “Shit, man. I already took care of that!”

“Took care of it? What do you mean?”

“Man, Fisk asking us to take out his trash, like we’re his personal hit squad or something.” Dan sucked on his teeth.

 _Well, you call yourself the Enforcers, so_ … Matt decided it was no time to be pedantic when someone was outside the door with a chainsaw.

“I said, ‘ _hell_ no,’” Dan went on. “Couple of my boys went behind my back and done it anyway. And I took care of that.”

“You didn’t have a problem taking me out for Fisk,” Matt said. Still, he didn’t think Dan was lying.

“Shit. You was open season. And I owed you for my boy, Charles.”

The door suddenly began to shake and rattle as Potter went at it with the saw. Matt could smell the sawdust thickening the air and feel the heat from the rotating blades.

“Get down,” Matt instructed the mouthy one. He wasn’t much bigger than Elektra, and would only get in the way trying to hold Potter off. “Dan, help me with this.”

Side by side, Matt and the Enforcer boss pushed the chest of drawers and chair against the door, as Potter began to kick and punch at the hole he’d made.

“Don’t think I’m doing this because I care about you,” Matt said, bracing with his legs. “I need you to tell the cops what you know about Fisk.”

“You want me to rat.” Dan snorted. Even under pressure, he was defiant.

“You didn’t seem to have a problem ratting out Ox.”

“Yeah, well, Ox was a dumbass who killed people for no reason. And he was running this gang into the fucking ground.”

Matt’s fist clenched. “And Toby Edwards? You have a reason for killing him?”

“You think you win loyalty in the ‘hood by being a nice guy?”

“He was a good kid,” Matt said through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, well, heavy is the head that wears the fucking crown.”

Potter began to rev up the chainsaw once more.

“Melvin!” Matt yelled through the hole in the door. “Melvin, you don’t have to do this! I’m going to make sure these guys pay for what they did the to Betsy.”

Melvin paused, sniffling, then slammed the saw into the door. “You lie!” He shouted. His voice was slightly muffled by a mask. “You promised and you lied to me!”

“I’m sorry, Melvin!” Matt said. He heard Dan make an exasperated noise in his throat. “I’m sorry for what happened to Betsy. But this isn’t going to bring her back.”

“I know that!” Melvin slammed into the door again, so hard that Matt and Dan slid an inch across the floor. “I know that…” Again, Potter was sobbing. “But these are bad people! Just like Fisk. They’ll just go to jail and get back out again.”

“I know,” Matt said quietly. “I know...” _God_ , he thought. _I wish I could say that wasn’t true_. “You don’t want to do this, Melvin. You don’t want to become like them. You’re better than that.”

Potter had made a large enough hole in the door to fit both his fists and the chainsaw and began blindly sawing at the furniture - and beneath that, Matt and Dan’s heads.

The Mouth raised his gun. “Don’t shoot!” Matt hissed. “I told you bullets don’t work.” They’d just end up shooting each other - and him.

Pieces of drawer and splinters went flying all around the room. Both Dan and his idiot sidekick ignored Matt’s warning, and began to fire. Matt dodged, narrowly avoiding the gunfire, and kicked the gun from the mouthy one’s hands.

Potter yowled as Dan’s bullets struck his hands and forearms - they didn’t cut through the fabric of his thick gloves, but Matt knew it hurt every bit as much. Dan pressed the barrel against Potter’s knuckles and pulled the trigger before Matt could stop him. The chainsaw - still spinning - dropped to the ground, and beneath the _buzz_ of the spinning blades, Matt heard the bones in Potter’s hand snapping. Potter screamed.

Dan dashed for the chainsaw, promising pain for his assailant under his breath. Matt couldn’t kick the chainsaw away, not without possibly losing a couple of toes, so he settled for kicking Dan instead.

Dan fell onto his back, but bounded up again with a snarl, aiming his gun at Matt this time. Matt reached out and snapped Dan’s wrist just as he pulled the trigger, causing the bullet to embed in the ceiling and Dan to scream in pain.

Matt planted his fist in Dan’s face. While the Enforcer boss was still reeling from the blow, Matt twisted both his arms behind his back, using the man’s own bandanna to bind his wrists. As he tied up the knots, Matt sensed the other uninjured Enforcer going for the chainsaw.

“ _Don’t you dare_ ,” Matt hissed without turning around. The man scuttled back across the floor. Matt punched Dan several more times in the stomach to make sure he stayed down, then went to disable the chainsaw for good.

“Melvin!” Matt yelled through the hole in the door. “Melvin, are you alright?” He could hear the tailor sobbing in the hallway.

“No,” Potter said. “No… I didn’t know what else to do...”

“Stay right there, Melvin,” Matt instructed as he bound the Mouth. “I’m going to help you.”

The third man was still slumped in the corner, only semi conscious, blood continuing to leak from the stump of his wrist. Now that he could concentrate, Matt thought it might be the same large man who had said all those awful things to Elektra that night when the Enforcers had tried to kill him, who had thrown her through a wall. _Well_ , Matt thought, _good luck trying to jerk off with your left hand_.

“Ow, ow, ow!” The Mouth said when Matt wrenched his wrists together. “You already busted my fingers, man! Come on, I ain’t gonna do nothing. I - _gah_!” Whatever he was going to say was lost as Matt punched him in the teeth.

“Shut up.” _For God’s sake, shut up_.

Dan groaned as he used the wall to sit up. “What are you tying us up for?” He asked. “We didn’t do nothing tonight.”

“You’ve done plenty,” Matt said. “I know what kind of men you are.”

“I don’t like being judged,” Dan said. “Especially by someone who’s clearly got issues.”

“Well, you won’t have to deal with me for much longer.” There was no way all this commotion hadn’t caught the attention of the police.

“You think we’re all the same, don’t you? Just a bunch of no-good, young thugs. You got no fucking clue, man,” Dan said.

“I know what it’s like to be poor,” Matt replied as he began to push the broken furniture away from the door - not caring that he was showering the Enforcers in jagged, broken splinters.

“Yeah? You know what it’s like to give up your apartment for a check that never comes? You know what it’s like to lose custody of your baby girl ‘cause you’re ‘homeless’ now?”

When Matt didn’t reply, Dan said, “I didn’t think so. I figure anyone who got the time to run around and beat up on people he don’t even know, well...he don’t have any real problems. Half my boys used to be citizens, man. They used to work construction in the Kitchen. So what’re they gonna do when it’s all suddenly shut down and the head honcho’s in handcuffs? They don’t give you no severance package for that, man. Bet you didn’t think about that when you put him in jail, huh?”

“Fisk’s a criminal,” Matt said. “A murderer.”

“Hey, I hear you. You hate Fisk, Fisk hates you,” Dan said. “The rest of us are just trying not to get too close to the fire.”

“The police will be on their way,” Matt said as he shoved what was left of a couch aside. “Tell them everything you’ve got on Fisk.” Dan just laughed. “They’ll cut you a deal if you do.” Dan laughed even harder at that. “Do you really want to be locked up with Ox?” Matt hissed. “After _you_ gave him up?”

“Ox don’t know that,” Dan said. “Only guys who know that are six feet under, friend.”

“What?” Matt knew about Darnell, but had Dan killed the other man down in the basement that night to keep his secret? He knew the answer without having to ask.

“I don’t need no _deal_ ,” Dan went on. “The only thing they’re gonna find here is guns. And my boy here all sliced up, so I think the judge is gonna be sympathetic to us arming ourselves. You’ll be lucky if I go away for five, friend.”

Matt knew his mouth was hanging open. There had to be more evidence; this was a stash house... and he and Elektra had just destroyed the stash.

“If you wanted me gone, you should have let him take care of it.” Dan pointed toward the door and the sniveling Potter.

“I want _Fisk_ gone,” Matt said. “You’re just a means to an end.”

Dan sucked his teeth. “Well, like I said: I don’t take out other people’s trash.”

Matt only barely resisted the urge to punch him in the face once more. Clenching his fist, he instead pulled the door open and walked over to Potter, kneeling so they were face to face.

“Melvin. Melvin, listen to me.” Matt pulled a large welder’s mask from Potter’s face.

Potter sniffled. “What?”

“You hurt that man.” Matt pointed back toward the bedroom and the Enforcer with the maimed hand. “You destroyed some property. The cops are going to take you down to the station for that. I need you to do what they tell you, okay?”

Potter wiped his nose. "Okay."

“Tell them you want a lawyer, okay? Tell them your lawyers are Nelson and Murdock.”

“Who-who’s that?”

“They’re lawyers,” Matt said patiently. “They’ll understand why you did what you did. They’re going to help you. Nelson and Murdock. Can you repeat that for me?”

“N-nelson and Murdock,” Potter said.

Matt clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. They’re going to take care of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello from Japan!
> 
> As I'm winding down in this particular story, I'm planning on writing everything with Melvin Potter as a side story focused more on legal drama than action. Would a legal shorter story be something anyone is interested in reading?
> 
> Unfortunately, I realized some of the pacing was off with the next section, and I need to add to it/adjust, which means I don't think I'll have an update for you by Sunday (unless I get stranded in the hotel room for some reason), and for that, I am eternally sorry! Just call me GRRM from now on D: I will definitely be back with something next Thursday at the latest!


	32. Chapter 32

A thick blanket of snow had fallen on the city following the night of the Enforcers’ arrest. Elektra had left the driver and his accomplice tied up in the back of the delivery truck and ditched it near the station, surmising that enough yelling and banging coming from inside the truck would attract the attention of law enforcement. Whether they wanted to report a bunch of stolen heroin was their call.

As predicted, Nelson and Murdock had a call from the precinct first thing in the morning and a new client by noon. It seemed that, for now, Dan and his boys planned to stay true to their word and not rat on Fisk - Matt could only hope that their time in lockup would cause one of them to break, although he knew it wasn’t likely.

Unfortunately for both Nelson and Murdock, the circumstances of Potter’s arrest had reignited Karen’s desire to talk about Daredevil and Wilson Fisk. Evidently handing the photos from Cranston’s files off to Matt and Foggy (and presumably the devil of Hell’s Kitchen) didn’t mean she could take a break from digging.

“Do you guys think those gang members they arrested last night were working for Fisk?” Karen phrased it like a question, but her decisive tone suggested she already knew the answer.

Matt shrugged and took another bite of his lunch to avoid having to give any sort of committal response.

“According to our client,” Karen tapped Foggy’s notes from their meeting with Melvin Potter that morning, “Daredevil was there last night. You guys gave that stuff to Brett the other day, right?"

Foggy didn’t respond, and Matt knew it was up to him to keep lying to Karen at this point. _Fair enough_. “Yeah,” Matt said. “We did.”

“I bet that’s why he was there,” Karen said. “To give them what we found.”

“Well, they were gang members, so…” Matt trailed off, thinking of what Elektra had said to him. _Do you really think gang members are scared of you_?

“I doubt the devil of Hell’s Kitchen is that concerned with a couple of gangsters now that Fisk's out of jail.” Karen’s leg started to bounce beneath the table, the heel of her shoe tapping impatiently against the floor.

“Probably not,” Foggy said. _Not a lie_.

“Then…” Karen huffed. “Then what the hell are they doing? Why aren’t they giving him up?”

“Maybe they still will,” Foggy said, clearly trying to sound more hopeful than any of them felt. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours.” But in the world where the Enforcers lived, doing time was a rite of passage, not a punishment.

Elektra was right. They weren’t scared of the devil of Hell's Kitchen. They weren’t scared of the police. They probably weren’t even scared of Fisk. It took someone literally breaking down their door with a chainsaw to make them afraid. And that sort of violence, the sort of violence street gangs actually responded to, was a place Matt wouldn’t allow himself to go. Because he knew, with his anger, his need for control, that it was a road once started down he couldn’t stop.

“Dammit,” Karen hissed, after Matt and Foggy offered no more assurance than a half-hearted ‘maybe they’ll change their mind.’ She pushed her lunch, barely touched, away from her across the table. “Dammit! Why is it always like this? Why-?” Karen’s voice hitched, anger mingling with grief.

Foggy’s chair scraped against the floor as he moved to comfort her. “Karen-”

“You don’t-” Karen shrugged him away. “You don’t understand,” she said through clenched teeth. “Everything we find, everything we dig up...why is it never good enough?” She was crying now, and got up from the table before Matt or Foggy could respond. “It has to mean something,” she said, maybe more to herself than either of them. “It _has_ to mean something.”

“It _does_ mean something,” Foggy said. “It means that we have to keep fighting. No one’s invincible. Not even Fisk.”

“You don’t understand,” Karen said again. “The things we found have to mean something, because... because people died for them. I…” Karen clapped a hand over her mouth. “I got Ben killed,” she whispered into her fingers. “Because of me, because I had to keep digging, he… he…” Foggy enveloped Karen in a comforting hug as she began to sob.

Matt wished he could tell her just how well he understood. “Ben had been doing this for a long time, Karen,” Matt said instead. “Way longer than any of us. He knew what he was getting himself into.”

Karen paused in her crying, long enough that Matt thought his words must have had their intended effect. He wasn’t prepared for what she was about to admit next.

“He didn’t,” she said quietly, pushing herself away from Foggy. “Not that night. I… I… I _lied_ to him. Don’t you get it? _I got him killed_. And for what? Information no one can use?” Karen turned her back on Matt and Foggy and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Karen…” It was all Matt could say while he processed this revelation. He had always assumed it had been Ben calling the shots and Karen following his lead in their investigation into Fisk.

“Hey. You couldn’t have known,” Foggy said quietly. “None of us did. That’s the problem with being one of the good guys, right? People like Fisk, the lows they’ll sink to… it's crap we can’t even come up with.”

“You…” Karen wiped her nose. “You still think I’m one of the good guys?”

Foggy made an impatient sound. “Of course we do. Right, Matt?”

“Of course,” Matt said, trying to smile. He knew all too well what it was like to have good intentions go awry in the worst way possible.

 

\----------

 

They passed the rest of the work day in stifled, morose silence. Even after he got back to his apartment, Karen’s words continued to echo in Matt’s ears. _It has to mean something_.

Toby Edwards. Carl Hoffman. All those people at Fall Fest. Hugo Natchios. And Fisk declared not guilty. _It has to mean something_. Matt would be damned if he knew what it was.

The only solution he could think of for the immediate future was a bottle of whiskey.

“I take it things didn’t go the way you wanted,” Elektra said when she came over and found him on his third shot.

“Do they ever?”

Elektra sat atop his kitchen table so that she was facing him, elbows on her knees. “Those guys got arrested, didn’t they?”

“They did,” Matt said as he downed his drink. The warmth it created in his chest offered little comfort. _It has to mean something_. _But what_?

“They might not give up Fisk, but they’re off the streets. That counts for something, doesn't it?”

“For now,” Matt said. “Until the next assholes take their place. You were right, Elektra. I’m not going to stop all this on my own.”

“You’re not on your own.” Elektra put her hand over his as he went to pour himself another drink.

“You said-”

“I know what I said. And I meant it. But I’m not going to let you stir up trouble all by yourself. I mean, what's the fun in that?”

Matt couldn’t help but smile at her. “You want to stir up trouble, huh?” he asked, putting the cap back on his bottle of whiskey. “Then let’s get out of here. Go do something stupid like we used to.”

 

\----------

 

Matt left that ‘something’ up to Elektra’s discretion. To his surprise, she led them to the nearest subway station, stopping along the way to pick up a bottle of something he was sure was expensive.  After she turned them around for the third time inside the station, Matt felt compelled to ask where they were going.

“It’s a surprise,” she said, looking at her phone.

“Do you at least know which train to take?”

“Uh...Google does? I think. This one,” she said, walking over to a set of tracks. “Yeah, it's this one.”

Matt chuckled. “How have you lived in the city your entire life and not managed to figure out the subway?” He’d managed to figure out the subway and he couldn’t even read any of the signs.

“My dad never let me take the train by myself. You know that.” Matt recalled her not even knowing how to buy a fare card back in college. “I figured out the Tokyo metro on my own,” she added defensively.

“Okay,” Matt said smiling.

Elektra elbowed him in the ribs. “Shut up.”

When the train driver mumbled out their stop on the loudspeaker, Matt knew where they were going. “School?” he asked.

“I know we can’t go back, but…” Elektra leaned into his shoulder. “Maybe for one night.”

They took the steps up and out of the station to find Columbia University enveloped in nearly a foot of snow. As they waded through snow past their ankles, it quickly became apparent that no one had shoveled the sidewalks.

“I don’t think it’s open,” Matt said. It was only two days before Christmas, after all.

“So?”

It took Matt a few moments to get his bearings, but once he did, memories of college came flooding back to him. The quad he and Foggy would cut through on their way to get food after a long night of studying (or drinking). The freshman dorms that everyone but Matt seemed to consider some kind of slum housing - compared to the group home where he spent most of his teenage years, having to share a bathroom with a bunch of other people was hardly a big deal, especially when you didn’t even have to clean it yourself. And the bench where Elektra used to wait for him outside the library; she said she felt like she was ‘too loud’ to wait for him inside.

But she was leading them toward the gymnasium, its front doors secured by a heavy chain and padlock. Elektra handed him some kind of hairpin and flicked the lock with her thumb. “Show me what you got, Murdock. I heard you had a pretty good teacher.”

“You better hope there aren’t any cameras,” Matt said.

“Well,” Elektra asked. “Are there?”

Matt paused, listening for the tell-tale _whirs_ and _clicks_ in the ceiling above them. “They’re not recording. But what’s in the gym? We can wrestle back at my place, you know.”

“Just unlock it,” she said, examining the paper bag holding the bottle she’d bought on their way. “Before this warms up.”

Matt didn’t think there was much chance of that out in the snowy cold. His fingers fumbled a few times, but he was able to hear the tumblers click into place and after a few tries managed to pick it open.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand. Her heartbeat had sped up at the prospect of breaking and entering - something Matt normally wouldn’t be pleased with, but as long as they didn’t actually _break_ (or steal) anything, he was willing to play her game.

The hallways of the building were cold and dead silent, but the room where she took him was swampy and stiflingly warm, the echoes of their footsteps bouncing wildly across the walls and ceiling.

“Let’s go for a swim.” Elektra took off her boots and coat, her pants, shirt...and then _everything_ else before running and jumping into the indoor pool. “Come on,” she called from the water. Matt had to forcibly block out the overwhelming stink of chlorine as he stripped off his clothes.

As the warm water enveloped his bare flesh, Matt was transported back to that summer they had practically lived in her father’s pool out on Long Island, when he had almost been able to forget about the men who murdered his dad, and studying, and going to church, and the only things that mattered were the sun and her laughter and the feeling of her skin against his. He knew that was exactly why she had brought them here.

“Race me,” Elektra said, making her way to one side of the long pool.

“Oh, come on,” Matt said. “You know you’ll win.” He was an okay swimmer - he could make his way from one side of a body of water to the other without drowning - but Elektra had grown up with a pool in her backyard and nearly a decade of private lessons.

“Maybe you got some practice in, swimming in the Hudson.” There was definitely an air of disgust in her voice that Matt wholeheartedly agreed with. “I still can’t believe you went in there.”

“I still can’t believe I didn’t get a rash.” Using that sickening thought to distract her, Matt grabbed Elektra’s leg and yanked her under the water toward him. She came up laughing and splashed him.

“Come here,” Matt said, putting his arms around her waist. “I don’t want to race.”

“Hang on.” Elektra wriggled free of his grip and hopped out of the pool, returning with the bottle from the liquor store. When she popped the cork, sweet smelling bubbles spewed everywhere and the echoing noise lit up every corner of the room.

“What are we celebrating?” Matt asked as Elektra took a long gulp of champagne directly from the bottle. When she passed it to him, he felt the letters spelling out _Moët et Chandon_ embossed on the label. “This is real classy, by the way,” he added as he took a swig.

“I know,” she said, putting her arms around his neck, water still tinged with champagne froth lapping gently at their shoulders. “To the past.” Elektra raised the bottle overheard. “To being dumb college students.”

“Elektra.” Matt cupped her cheek. “It can be good again.” _How many times do I have to tell you that_? “Not exactly how it was, but… It can be good. And to be honest, we’re both still pretty dumb sometimes.”

“I know.” Why did she sound so scared to believe him? “But tonight…”

 _Tonight we can play pretend_. Matt kissed her hard on the mouth. He would show her that things could be good again. That _they_ could be _them_ again. That, with him by her side, she never had to feel alone.

 

\----------

 

While people bustled around the city doing last minute Christmas shopping and tourists gaped at the window displays on 5th Avenue, Elektra sat alone in her apartment.

Nelson and Murdock wouldn’t normally be open on Christmas Eve, but they had a new client, and for Matt, at least, this one was personal. He’d apologized profusely when he left in the morning and promised to take her out for dinner before he left for church.

After she showered for the second time, trying to get the stink of chlorine out of her hair, she flicked through the channels on her television, finding each program to be mocking her. Christmas special after Christmas special, all preaching the importance of family. Matt was trying to be that for her, and she loved him for that, but it wasn’t the same.

 _Daddy_ , she said to his ghost. _You should be here_. She could almost picture him standing in her apartment, his attempts to criticize its messy state undercut by the softness around his dark eyes.

“Ah, my princess,” he would say. “When are you going to learn how to cook me Christmas dinner?” _Never, Daddy_. _They took you away from me_.

Elektra turned the television off and threw on some clothes and her coat. Her father couldn’t come to her apartment anymore, but she could still go to see him. She gave the cab driver directions to the cemetery - her Porsche not exactly being snow friendly - after stopping at a flower shop and buying two large, red bouquets.

Although he had never strayed far from his Greek heritage, her father had wanted to be buried in New York City, his adopted home, the place that had raised him up to become _somebody_. The city that had raised Fisk up too, to become a monster.

Elektra’s parents were buried side by side beneath large headstones, their names inscribed in both English and Greek. The flowers she had brought last week were buried under the snow, so she simply placed the new bouquets atop the old, brushing snow from the all the crevices and crannies of the headstones until they were clear. _Beloved Wife_. _Beloved Mother_. _Beloved Husband_. _Beloved Father_. Their beloved daughter sat down cross-legged in the snow between them.

She wasn’t the only person paying her respects before the holiday. At least a dozen other people came and went, their footsteps crunching in the snow around her. None of them paid any attention to her as she sat on the ground.

“I miss you,” Elektra said. “I’m all alone now. Well…” She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I will be. Daddy, I-” She thought back to what Eric Slaughter had said to her. ‘ _Your father would want you to be happy_ .’ He was right.

“I can’t stop,” she said to her father’s headstone. “I know it’s not what you wanted, but I… There’s something inside me. Something angry. Something _ugly_. It won’t let me stop.” Elektra supposed it had been there all along, sleeping. And when they had killed her father, they woke the beast.

She sat on the snowy ground for a long time, long after she had begun shivering and her ass had gone numb with cold. It wasn’t until she looked up and saw the sun sinking into the horizon that she realized how late it was and how long she’d spent at the cemetery.

Elektra rose to her feet, dusting snow from the back of her pants. Several sets of footsteps crunched in the snow behind her. She leaned forward to straighten one of the flowers atop her father’s grave when she felt rough hands on her shoulders and arms.

She immediately wrenched her right arm free, and pivoted on her attacker, feeling a sharp pricking sensation in the side of her neck.

Elektra launched a kick at a large man in a dark wool coat, tagging him in the side. He grunted at the impact, but was able to easily sidestep the follow-up blow from her fist. Why did her arms feel so heavy? The ground was spinning beneath her, like she was drunk. Elektra tried to hit the man again and missed horribly, sliding across the snow. Desperately trying to keep her eyelids open, she saw something small and clear in the man’s gloved fist.

 _Tranquilizers_. _Shit_. She contemplated the irony of that as her legs gave out and the darkness consumed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am PROFUSELY sorry that it took me so long to get this chapter up - poor travel timing and poor story planning. I apologize again! I do have the next chapter all queued up and ready to go, so I don't feel too bad ending this one on quite a cliffhanger.
> 
> I glossed over the actual meeting with Potter here because it will be shown in its entirety in the shorter legal story I'm working on - a different can of worms for a different time. Some of the more personal things Karen and Matt bring up in this chapter will continue to be explored in that story as well! But first, I'm writing an Elektra-centric short story set in Japan...whether that's a prequel or a sequel to this story, well, you'll just have to wait and see.


	33. Chapter 33

Elektra woke slowly, by degrees. First, she was aware of her breathing, deep but labored; then her heart pounding in her ears. Then it was a soreness in her chest and neck, the feeling that her head was stuffed with rags. And finally, she began to feel her limbs again, impossibly heavy and cramped. A groan slipped from her lips, unbidden, as she forced her head up and off her chest, forced her eyelids to open.

The light was bright and blinding. No matter how much she blinked, her eyes wouldn’t adjust. When she tried to raise a hand to shield her gaze, she felt harsh restraints bite into her wrists. Her arms were bound behind her around something hard and cold that pressed into her back. A pole. Struggling to bring her arms from behind her back only caused pain to flare at her bindings and her fingers to go numb. Her knees were folded beneath her, but she couldn't get to her feet no matter how hard she struggled to stand. _Fuck_.

Squinting against the harsh white glare, Elektra made out a dark lump in the center of it. As her eyes began to focus, she realized it was a massive human form looming over her, silhouetted black against the bright light.

“You,” she croaked out. Elektra didn’t need to see his face to know who it was. “You… _murderer_.”

“I didn’t want it to be this way,” Fisk said. “But you’ve become a… _problem_ that I can’t ignore.”

“Fuck you.” Elektra would have spat if her mouth wasn’t so dry.

“You have your father’s ledgers,” Fisk said calmly. The only thing that betrayed his irritation was a twinkling of light at his side as his fingers twitched. “And you know the masked man. This… _Daredevil_.”

“I’m not telling you shit,” Elektra snarled. “I know what you do to people after you get what you need from them. You’re not going to let me go.”

 _This is how it ends_. With her in a bunch of trash bags at the bottom of the Hudson river. It was only her anger - and her pride - that kept the terror at bay.

“Your father had remarkably little regard for his own life. I…see that you are the same.”

“ _Don’t fucking talk about him_ ,” Elektra hissed through gritted teeth. Even though it was futile, she tried to lash out, succeeding only in bruising her wrists and banging her knees into the concrete.

“You should have let it go.” Fisk’s tone shifted to something admonishing.

“Let it go? He was my _father_! And you murdered him!”

“Your father was a common thug, and so are you. Beneath the money, the cars and designer clothes…we can never entirely hide what we truly are, Miss Natchios.”

“Is that what you tried to do?” Elektra said. “Hide the fact that you're a monster? You’ve been one since you were twelve years old.”

Fisk didn’t move, but Elektra felt his energy change, the way it had when he saw Daredevil at the church, from man to something menacing, inhuman.

Emboldened by finally getting a reaction out of him, she went on. “You killed your own father. You beat him to death. I wouldn’t expect you to understand why I couldn’t just ‘let it go.’”

“ _Don’t_ -”

Elektra braced herself for the impending blow, but it never came. Instead, Fisk brought his arms in front of his body, fidgeting with something on his sleeve.

“Don’t,” he growled again. Whatever was supposed to follow that died in his throat. “You are going to tell me everything you know about Daredevil.”

“You really hate him, don’t you? You hate that he beat you.” _I’m so sorry, Matt. For everything_.

Fisk ignored her. “You _will_ tell me everything. I learned from my mistake with your father. You may not care about your own life, but you have people you care about, don’t you? Like that lawyer you were with at that party.”

Elektra felt her lips curl upward, as much out of disbelief as amusement. _You really have no fucking clue, do you_?

“I’ve sent my associates to collect Mister Murdock.”

Fisk sent his goons after Matt? A chill went through her that had nothing to do with the cold. Elektra didn’t know whether to laugh or weep.

“I never liked him much,” Fisk went on. “I find him unbearably smug. The man in the mask, he…told Carl Hoffman to hire Murdock as his lawyer.” Fisk began to pace in front of the spotlight. “I found it…curious…that he would recommend such an amateur firm to represent such an important witness. And I found it curious that the man in the mask saved that firm’s only employee from the man I sent to her apartment."

While Fisk talked, Elektra began to attempt to straighten her legs in front of her, grimacing against the groaning in her cramped muscles and tendons as she twisted one knee around and then the other.

"Why would the man in the mask care about a couple of lawyers that were still wet behind the ears?" Fisk said. "The only reason I can think of…is that he must know them. And they must know him. If you don’t want to tell me what you know, maybe Murdock will.”

“Do you think the gangbangers of Hell’s Kitchen are going to be intimidated when they hear about how you beat up a blind man and an unarmed woman?” Elektra sneered.

“They’ll fall in line. But that’s not your concern.” Fisk stopped moving and turned towards her. Elektra being forced into a seated position only further exaggerated the size difference between them. “Your concern…is how much you want to suffer tonight. Tell me everything, and you and Murdock get a bullet to the head. Refuse, and I’ll beat you both to death, slowly, right here. It’s your choice.”

 _That’s not a choice_ , she thought. "Fuck you." Elektra managed to get her legs in front of her and brought her knees up to her chest. She knew she wasn’t strong enough to repel three hundred pounds of Fisk's fury, especially with her hands still bound behind her back, but instinct had taken over. She had to try.

Behind her and off to the right, a door slammed open. A man crossed in front of her, something large slumped over his shoulder. _Oh, God. Matt_! The man dropped him at her feet. Matt was unconscious, still dressed in his work clothes and wearing his coat. One of his fists was caked with dried blood. The only things missing were his sunglasses and cane.

“What did you do to him?” Elektra demanded. The man ignored her.

“Where’s Smith?” Fisk asked.

In a distorted, nasally voice, the other man replied, “I told him to watch the door. This guy knocked him out cold. I think he broke my nose before the drugs kicked in, sir.” So, they used a tranquilizer on Matt too.

“Matt. Matt!” Elektra prodded his shoulder with the toe of her shoe. _Wake up_!

“You underestimated him,” Fisk said to the man. “People are animals, Francis. They will do extraordinary things when cornered.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Francis replied, clutching his nose. “It won’t happen again, sir.”

“Of course it won’t,” Elektra said. She needed to buy time for Matt to rouse. “You know what he does to people when they’ve outlived their usefulness, don’t you, Francis? How do you think you got your job? Do you really think the guy before you is off enjoying his retirement?”

“ _He was my friend_!” Fisk thundered, and again, Elektra braced for a punch that didn’t come. Fisk must have realized she couldn’t tell him anything with a broken jaw. “Wesley…Wesley was my friend,” he said again, composing himself. “And the person who killed him will pay for what they’ve done.”

 _Karen_ , Elektra realized. _He’s talking about Karen, even if he doesn’t know it yet_. This had to end tonight.

“You see, Francis?” Fisk motioned at Elektra. “The things people do when they’re afraid?”

Beneath her, Matt began to stir on the concrete, and Elektra kept poking at him. _Keep him talking_.

“Now,” Fisk said, looming over both of them. “Tell me about the man in the mask.”

 _Give it a few minutes, and you can ask him yourself_. Aloud, she said, “What does it matter if you know his name? What he does for a living? You just want to kill him, anyway.”

“No,” Fisk said. “I want to destroy him. I want him to watch as his life crumbles around him. I want him to watch as I take away everyone he ever loved, everyone he ever cared about or associated with. I’m going to start by sending him pieces of you.”

Elektra swallowed hard, in spite of herself.

“Then it will be Murdock, here. And then his partner and their secretary.”

“You’re even worse than I thought.”

“We have your friend in the mask to thank for that. Now,” Fisk took a threatening step toward Matt. “You will tell me about him.”

“ _No_!” Elektra hated the hysteria in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. The thought of Fisk hurting Matt, hurting Matt like he had hurt her father, was enough to drive her into a frenzy. She thrashed against the pole, not caring or even noticing the pain in her hands anymore. Fisk watched her panic with cold detachment. Matt began to crawl toward her, so slowly she wondered if Fisk even noticed.

“Wait,” Elektra said again, slightly more calm. “You want to know about the man in the mask?” She continued to prod Matt with one foot and tapped the other against the concrete floor, hoping that if Matt had any awareness at all, the sounds and vibrations would give him some sense of his surroundings, of the shit they were about two minutes away from drowning in.

“He’s a _good_ person. The kind of world he believes in - there’s no place for someone like you. Maybe there’s no place for someone like me either.” Elektra felt Matt’s hands on her feet and ankles, like he was trying to use her body to pull himself upright. “I won’t let you destroy him.”

With a snarl, Fisk lunged forward and grabbed Matt by the back of his collar. Elektra screamed.

 

\----------

 

Matt had been careless. He’d noted the two unfamiliar men in the hallway outside his apartment as he returned from work, but it was Christmas Eve and not at all unusual for visitors to come and go throughout the building. Still, he would have been able to dispatch both men easily if they hadn’t stuck him with that damn needle.

The next thing he knew, he was lying facedown on cold concrete, familiar voices echoing overhead. Elektra. Wilson Fisk. The realization was a jolt to his nervous system, energizing limbs sluggish from the drugs and clearing the fog shrouding his mind. Had Fisk realized he was the man in the mask? Matt supposed the reason he was here didn’t matter - whatever his reasons, Fisk’s victims always ended up the same. _Come on, Matty_ , his father said in his mind. _You can do this_.

Elektra shouted something at Fisk. Instead of trying to make out her words, Matt focused on the sound of her voice, the way it bounced around them. The room was wide and empty, the ceiling low. Then something repeatedly hit the floor in front of him, and the ensuing vibrations made the scene come sharply into focus. Elektra with her back against a pole, hands behind her back, a foot in front of him. Fisk standing several feet behind. And another man, bleeding, off to the side. From the way Elektra twisted and strained, he knew she was tied up. And facing down Wilson Fisk. _No!_

If he panicked now, they were both dead. Matt began to crawl forward slowly and felt Elektra’s feet, her ankles and legs. His own legs and arms didn't seem to want to obey him, responding to his brain at an excruciating delay. The only thing he could think to do was protect her, shield her with his body against Fisk's rage.

Before he could react, Matt felt himself suddenly hauled off the ground, spun around, his back slammed into the pole next to Elektra. She was screaming. Matt could sense Fisk's massive, bald head inches from his face and did the only thing he could think of - he slammed his own skull into Fisk's. The impact stunned both of them, Fisk stumbling backwards as Matt slumped to the side.

The other man drew his pistol and ran forward. Elektra shrieked and kicked him as he charged, causing his shot to hit the ceiling. Matt used Fisk’s momentary shock to scramble over to the guard who was now rounding on Elektra with his gun.

Matt slammed his fist into the man’s gut. Even as he gasped for air, the guard brought the pistol around, aiming for Matt’s face. Matt grabbed the man’s wrist, wrenching his arm downward and causing the guard to fire several rounds into the floor. With his free hand, Matt grabbed the guard by the elbow and brought his heel down on the man’s forearm. The bones broke with a loud _crack_ and a howl. The gun clattered to the ground from lifeless fingers.

But Matt wasn’t done with him. The man sank to his knees, clutching his broken arm close to his body. Matt kicked him in the face. The guard’s head whipped back at an almost unnatural angle - his neck didn’t break, but at that moment, Matt wouldn’t have cared if it had. Compunction about killing was a luxury he could only afford when he was in control of the situation. And even with this guard disarmed and unconscious on the concrete, Matt knew he was not the one in control.

“ _YOU_!” Fisk thundered as Matt desperately did a pat down of the guard’s clothing, looking for something to cut Elektra free. “ _Murdock_! _You_ …!” Fisk searched for words while Matt searched the other man’s pockets. “ _It’s…you_!”

Matt realized that whatever Fisk’s plan had been for him and Elektra was now eclipsed by the man’s overwhelming need to destroy Daredevil.

He wondered if Fisk had let him take down the guard on purpose, to see just how well the blind man could fight. And now Matt was sure Fisk was thinking he must have been faking his blindness all along, even as Matt’s eyes were unable to quite meet his glare.

Whatever confusion this may have caused only bought Matt a few seconds to slide the guard’s pocket knife into Elektra's hands before Fisk plowed into him, sending Matt sliding across the floor on his back.

He tasted blood in his mouth. His chest and shoulder screamed in agony.

 _Get up, Matty_. _Come on_.

All Matt’s anger, his frustration and pain caused by Fisk and his people over the past two years, caused by the men who had shot his father twenty years ago, coalesced into pure, red rage. The scared, little boy in the alley had grown up. And he wasn’t afraid anymore.

Matt leapt to his feet, shrugging off his coat and suit jacket. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s _me_.”

 

\----------

 

Elektra felt like it was taking her days to cut through the cord binding her wrists. With the way her hands were bound, she couldn't see what she was doing and barely had any leverage as she tried to saw through the thick cable. Fisk and Matt danced in and out of her field of vision - Matt grunting and growling with each blow while Fisk ranted about Daredevil and the filth of the city.

"You're a coward!" Fisk screamed. " _Coward_! Did you think a blind man would be above notice? How many masks do you hide behind?"

Now that Fisk had realized the man he wanted to destroy was here within his grasp, Elektra knew she was all but forgotten. And that made her furious. Was she - was her _father_   - nothing more than a pawn in Fisk’s game? _You don’t get to take my Daddy away and just ignore me_.

After what felt like an eternity, the cord snapped and fell away from her hands and arms. Elektra jumped to her feet and shook the inertia from her limbs. She began to look for the guard’s gun using both her eyes and her hands, his crumpled, unconscious body lying half in and half out of the single light source in the room. Matt and Fisk were on the far side of the building, pummeling each other.

Suddenly, a door banged open behind her. Elektra spun around, able to make out another man in a dark coat with a pistol. He was unsteady on his feet, but began to trundle toward Matt with his gun drawn.

“ _No_!” Elektra screamed. The only weapon she had was the little pocket knife, its blade no more than two inches long. _Good enough_. Elektra charged the man, slashing at him with the knife. He brought his arm up to protect his face, and she cut a gash across his forearm.

He tried to train his gun on her, but Elektra was too quick. She slid around the man’s side and sunk the knife into his shoulder, ripping it back out before he could react. Elektra knew it wasn’t substantial enough to do any serious damage, but it was enough to stop him from shooting Matt.

The man shouted in pain. Elektra slashed at his arms and chest until the knife became so slick with blood that it slipped out of her hand.

In his pain, and already unsteady on his feet, the man threw a clumsy punch that she easily dodged. Elektra slammed the toe of her shoe into the man's kneecap, causing him to groan and sink to the ground. Her next kick took the man in the temple, leaving him unconscious - or maybe dead, she didn't care - on the floor.

"Matt!" Elektra screamed. She grabbed the man's gun from the ground and tried to aim it at Fisk, but it was so dark and Matt was moving so quickly around the larger man that she couldn't be sure she wouldn't hit him. And this time, he wasn't wearing any armor.

When she tried to get closer, Fisk let out a great roar, lifting Matt off his feet and hurtling him right into Elektra. There was no time for her to dodge; Matt collided with her, knocking the wind out of her and sending them both sprawling. Elektra gasped for air, pinned between Matt and a wall. He slumped against her body, groaning and bloody.

“You two deserve each other!” Fisk shouted as he stomped toward them. "You deserve this city and all its squalor!"

Elektra cradled Matt’s head with her left arm, covering his right ear with her hand. With the gun in her other hand, Elektra aimed at Fisk’s chest and squeezed the trigger. As each bullet struck him, Fisk momentarily recoiled, halting his advance before taking another step forward. He was inexorable. _His suits are bulletproof_ , Elektra recalled Matt saying.

Before she could take aim at his head, Fisk was upon them. He knocked the gun from her grasp with one slap from his colossal hand. The other hand grabbed Matt by the collar, pulling him away from Elektra and tossing him aside like trash.

“Is she important to you, Murdock?” Fisk screamed. Elektra tried to scramble away from him, but Fisk grabbed her by the ankle, dragging her back across the concrete. “Watch me tear her apart!”

As Fisk slammed her against the wall, Elektra punched and kicked at him to no avail. He only needed one hand to wrap around her throat and choke her. She gasped and gagged and could clearly make out what was supposed to be a smile on Fisk’s face, but it just looked like an animal baring its teeth.

"After her, I'll pay a visit to Nelson! And then Miss Page! What about the cop that arrested me? Mahoney? That nurse you rescued from the Russians? I'll destroy every last one of them! I will _erase_ you!"

Fisk's body was too brawny for her to injure with just her fists, so Elektra went for a place where even a shark was vulnerable. She jammed her thumbnail into Fisk’s left eye.

Fisk screamed, releasing his grip on her throat and knocking her aside. But Matt was back on his feet, and rammed his fist into Fisk’s lower jaw as the larger man clutched at his bloody face. While Matt continued to pummel him, Elektra caught her breath and grabbed the cord that had been used to tie her to the pole.

 

\----------

 

Every one of Fisk's threats added fuel to the flames of Matt's anger. He didn't feel the pain from the bruises and cuts Fisk's beating had inflicted upon him. He didn't feel the shockwaves traveling from his knuckles up to his shoulder as his fists connected with Fisk's face. He realized that, like Fisk, he didn't just want to hurt his enemy - he wanted to obliterate him.

With a snarl, Elektra came up behind the larger man and wrapped something rope-like around his neck. Fisk's hand, still cradling his bloody eye, got caught in the ligature. Elektra cried out as she tried to strangle him, struggling against Fisk’s strength as he used his trapped arm to keep the cord from cutting off his breathing entirely.

Matt wasted no time taking advantage of Fisk's predicament. He slammed his fist into the places on his torso where Elektra had shot him; the protective fabric that had caught the bullets remained several degrees warmer than body temperature, standing out like lampposts to Matt's senses. Already severely bruised in those places, Fisk groaned with each blow.

But Fisk fed off his pain and anger just like Matt did. He brought his other hand under the cord around his neck and yanked it away, causing Elektra to slam into his back and slicing both of her palms open again.

Matt whirled his leg around, kicking Fisk in the side. At the same time, Elektra aimed a kick of her own at the soft spot behind Fisk's knee. The dual blows caught him off balance, and the massive man fell to the floor, the force of his weight causing even the walls to shudder.

Matt immediately brought his heel down on Fisk's nose, breaking it and several of his teeth. Fisk tried to haul him off, but lying prone mitigated his superior strength. Matt aimed his next kick at the socket of Fisk's good eye, feeling it shatter beneath the toe of his shoe.

"You…" Fisk croaked out. "Murdock…this city…they'll never thank you…they'll turn and…and… devour you…"

Knees pressed into Fisk's chest, Matt hit him over and over and over again. For Elena Cardenas. For Ben Urich. For Betsy and Melvin Potter. For Foggy and Karen. For Hugo Natchios. For Elektra. For Jack Murdock. And for the boy in the alley, alone and afraid.

"Stop." Matt didn't know how long Elektra had been speaking to him, how long she'd been standing behind him.

Matt paused, his hands quivering, his whole body trembling. Fisk expelled a shallow, wheezy breath and bloody phlegm from his shattered mouth. Elektra pulled Matt to his feet and he slumped against her, running his hands - covered in Fisk's blood - over her face.

"Are you…are you okay?"

"Yeah," Elektra said, clutching him. "I'm okay."

As they stood there - bloody, shaking, clinging to each other - Matt's rationality began to return to him. Fisk's heart was still beating - barely - and he was unconscious. She'd stopped him. She'd stopped him from going too far.

Further away, Matt could hear the shallow, labored breathing of the two guards.

"We…we have to call the cops," Matt said.

"No."

"He kidnapped us, Elektra." Matt paused for a moment to catch a breath. "He tried to kill us."

"No," she said again. Matt realized she wasn't looking at him at all, but her face was aimed over his shoulder at Fisk's unconscious body.

"He's not getting out of this one, Elektra. He…he…"

" _No_." It was then that Matt realized she was holding a gun. He didn't know if Elektra was too fast, if he was too exhausted, or if some small part of him didn't want to stop her. But before he could react, Elektra took aim and pulled the trigger, planting a single bullet in Fisk's forehead. Right between the eyes.

Even though he was already unconscious when struck, Fisk's body suddenly went rigid, his arms twitching, his heels drumming on the concrete. An awful, animal-like gurgle escaped his lips.

Matt stood there, frozen, as Elektra extricated herself from his arms. He was vaguely aware of her wiping down the gun and planting it on one of the guards, of her collecting Matt's coat and jacket from where he'd shed them.

"Elektra… I… You…" Matt felt his knees go out from under him.

"I had to, Matt." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Not just for Daddy. I… I don't want to be another one of his victims. I don't expect you to forgive me. I'm not sorry for it." She inhaled deeply. "But I am sorry for hurting you. That I couldn't be _good_ like you." She placed Matt's coat on his shoulders. "If you still want to call the cops, I… well, I'd appreciate it if you gave me a head start."

That hit Matt like one of Fisk's punches to the gut. _She's going to leave_. _She's going to leave you again_.

Matt grabbed her wrist. "No," he said. "You don't have to run. You never have to run. I'll protect you."

Elektra crossed in front of him, cupping his chin with her bloody hand. "I'm the same as them now. The people you fight. Don't… don’t _dirty_ yourself by protecting me."

"You're nothing like them," Matt said, shaking his head. " _Nothing_."

"You don't know their stories."

"No," Matt said, his voice gaining strength. He pushed himself back to his feet. "But I know you. I know that you care about the people that matter to you so deeply that it hurts. That it terrifies you. I know that you think you don't deserve nice things, that you don't deserve to be loved. And I know that you're wrong."

"I can't let you turn yourself into a hypocrite," Elektra said. "I can't be the cause of that. You burn so bright… I'd never forgive myself for snuffing that out."

"Maybe I already am a hypocrite." Matt's voice was pleading. "But you stopped me tonight, and you stopped me that night at Cranston's. You pulled me back from the edge."

Elektra didn’t say anything, and Matt desperately wished he could see the expression on her face. “Come on,” he said to her. “Someone must have heard the shots.”

“Matt…”

He grabbed her hand. “Come on.” Right before the door closed behind them, Matt heard the slow, tortured beating of Fisk’s heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoy this fight as much as the one with Bullseye in the church ("enjoy" might not be the right word here).
> 
> One more chapter to go!


	34. Chapter 34

When they returned to Matt’s apartment, the two of them immediately stumbled into his shower. Neither one tried to initiate sex, both too exhausted, too traumatized, to seek physical pleasure. They merely leaned against one another beneath the hot water, standing naked in a pool of blood and soap, relishing the fact that they were still alive.

The water beginning to run cold brought Elektra back to reality. It had to end. _Everything has to end_.

“I need to go home,” Elektra said, pulling on a pair of Matt’s pants.

“Okay.” Matt put on jeans and grabbed a pair of boots from his closet, clearly intending to accompany her.

“Matt, you don’t…”

“I’m not going to leave you alone,” he said, tying his shoes.

“Matt, I _killed_ him.” _And I’m not sorry_. “Are we even on the same side anymore?”

“What?” Matt looked toward her, frowning. “Of course we’re on the same side. We’re always on the same side.”

Elektra sighed. Matt coming along was only going to make their inevitable parting that much worse, but she knew he’d just follow her anyway. He grabbed an older pair of sunglasses from his top drawer and one of several spare canes from his closet.

“What happened to your stuff?”

“I’m hoping it’s still in the hallway where they knocked me out,” Matt said.

Elektra poked her head out his front door and looked around. “I don’t see anything.”

“Shit.” Matt pushed past her out the door and paused. “Shit,” he said again.

“Matt,” Elektra said in a whisper. “What if the cops find it? What if they _found_ it?”

“I didn’t have any missed calls from the police on my phone - or Foggy, for that matter. Hopefully one of my neighbors picked it up.”

“And they wouldn’t call the cops?”

Matt quirked a smile at her. “How long have you lived in New York? The only thing they’d be concerned about was me cluttering up the hallway.”

None of this felt like a particularly good explanation to Elektra, but it was past one in the morning; if Fisk’s men had abducted Matt on his way home from work, anyone concerned for his safety would have at least tried calling him now.

They had balled all their bloody clothes up together in a dark trash bag, which Matt tossed into a dumpster somewhere between his apartment and hers. The doorman wished them a merry Christmas as he let them in her building, ignoring the fact that she was wearing oversized men’s clothing with a pair of heeled boots. Ignoring such things was part of his job, of course, and there were a million more likely explanations than ‘she shot someone and had to change out of her bloody clothes,’ but Elektra couldn’t help but feel paranoid. When they returned to her apartment, she shook the ice from her still-damp hair and turned on her laptop, immediately navigating to an airline website.

“Any news sites reporting anything yet?” Matt asked.

“No,” Elektra lied as she searched for immediate flights from New York to Tokyo. Even though the holidays were a hectic time for travel, most people didn’t want to spend the actual day of Christmas on a fifteen hour plane ride, and she booked herself a first class ticket on a nine a.m. flight.

After that was done, she did tab over to a couple of local news websites and found that, for now, she was still in the clear.

Nearly two a.m. How much time did she have left? How much time did _they_ have left? Before she went back to Japan, there was one last thing she had to do.

Elektra changed into her own clothes and retrieved a small key from her jewelry box.

“We have to go to the bank,” she said.

Matt frowned. “Why?”

“Because I made a promise to my dad.”

Elektra tried to savor every moment of their trip to the bank, even as exhaustion and the pain from her wounds began to set in with a vengeance. The warmth and weight of Matt’s arm around her shoulder. The stubble dotting the hollow of his jaw. The way his voice and laugh rumbled deep in his chest.

“Are banks even open now?” Matt asked when the cab driver dropped them off.

“No,” Elektra said. “But a big enough deposit gets you twenty-four seven access.” She used her card to enter the vestibule, then entered her pin and inserted the key into the machine. There was a humming of machinery and a metallic _clang_ as the machine retrieved her safety deposit box. Elektra removed her father’s ledgers.

Back at her apartment, she took a large cooking pot out on the balcony and lit the pages while Matt stood by, letting the ashes fall into the pan and the smoke scatter in the winter wind. It was done. Her father’s ghost would always haunt her, but maybe now his spirit could rest in peace.

Four-thirty in the morning. There was no more delaying it. When Elektra went back inside and pulled out her suitcase, all the color drained from Matt’s face.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t have to go.”

“Just for a little while,” she said, shoving clothes haphazardly in her bag. “Just until this all blows over.”

“Elektra.” Matt looked dead on his feet. Defeated. _I’m so sorry_ , she thought. “How long?”

She had only booked a one-way ticket. “I don’t know. A couple of weeks? How long will it take them to drop the Fisk thing?”

She had planted the gun on the guard whose arm hadn’t been broken, but she knew if the cops looked closely at the scene, at all the injuries, an argument between guard and employer wouldn’t add up. She didn’t know if either of the surviving bodyguards would drop her name or Matt’s, if they would actually admit to kidnapping, but it was probably better than getting charged with murder.

Matt sank down onto her bed. “You were with me all night. We didn’t leave my apartment until we came to your place a few hours ago.”

Elektra frowned. “Don’t lie to the cops for me,” she said. “Don’t change who you are for me.” _Don’t ever change who you are_.

“The cops don’t always get it right,” Matt said. “The law doesn’t always get it right. Most of the time it does, and that’s what I believe, what I have to believe - but this time…”

“I’m a killer, Matt. Just like the rest. I’m not like you.”

While Matt continued to talk himself in circles, Elektra went to her computer to check if her flight was on time. The news site she had left up earlier automatically refreshed when she woke the laptop from sleep, loading the early morning report.

"Breaking news from Hell’s Kitchen this morning,” the reporter said as the video automatically played. “Real estate developer and recent exoneree Wilson Fisk is in critical condition after a shooting late last night. The exact circumstances of his shooting are currently unknown, but another man is also in critical condition, while a third man is listed in serious, but stable condition at Metro General Hospital.”

Elektra felt her eyes grow wide, felt the floor shift beneath her feet. She grabbed the desk to steady herself, trying to breathe. Wilson Fisk was alive. _Alive_. Alive after she shot him, after Matt beat his face to a pulp.

She whirled around. “ _You knew_!” From the way Matt cringed when she rounded on him, there was no denying it. “You could hear his heartbeat! You knew!”

“I didn't think he'd make it,” Matt said miserably.

“Then why didn't you tell me to finish it? _Why didn't you tell me_?”

“Because...because that's not our place to decide.”

Elektra laughed bitterly. “Are you talking about _God_? Is that the kind of God you believe in, Matt? The kind of God that let my dad die and saved Wilson Fisk?”

Matt grimaced. “It’s not our place to decide,” he said again, barely above a whisper, like he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

“No,” Elektra sneered. “Just who gets their face caved in. God dammit, Matt. He knows!” It took several moments more for the ramifications of that to really set in. Elektra slapped a hand over her mouth. “He knows,” she whispered, slumping on her bed. “He knows it's you. And he won't stop. He won't stop until...Oh, Jesus...”

“Listen to me.” Matt sat down next to her. “He still might not make it. And even if he does...he'll be lucky if he even remembers his own name. He probably won't even wake up. A lot of people would consider that worse than dying.”

“You don't know that.” Elektra's voice was high with panic. “There was only one way he wasn't coming back, and you...you should have let me finish it.”

“I'm s-sorry.” Matt tried to grab her hand, but she pulled away. “I...I just wanted to save you.”

Elektra felt anger flare in her chest. “I don't want to be saved!” she snarled. “I wanted justice!”

“You wanted revenge.”

“God dammit, Matt! Why do you get to decide?” Elektra put her hands on his chest and pushed him. Matt didn't fight back; he didn't even try to defend himself. “Why do you always get to decide? He killed my dad! And now...now he's...he's going to take you away from me too...”

Her tears had finally returned. Elektra began to sob. Matt tried to pull her to him and she slapped his arm away. Matt continued to grapple with her until she finally collapsed into his arms.

“I'm sorry,” Matt said again. She could feel his chest heaving against hers. “Don't go,” he whispered. “Please.”

 _Please_. She was breaking his heart all over again. But this was different. This time she couldn't stay, not while Fisk was still alive, while he could still say what she'd done to him.

“I have to,” she whispered.

"No." Matt put his hands on her shoulders so they were face to face. "You don't have to go anywhere. You're angry and you're scared. But that doesn’t mean you have to run.”

“You made me feel like I wasn’t alone, and I’ll always be grateful for that,” Elektra said. “But you and I...I don’t know. Maybe we were always meant to come together and fall apart.”

“No,” Matt said firmly. “I don’t believe that, not for a second. You are so damn scared that someone’s going to see _you_ \- the real you - that you make up these bullshit excuses to run away. Well, you know what, Elektra? I figured out your whole shallow, rich bitch thing was an act a long time ago. I know exactly who you really are, and I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“If you knew me, then you’d know why I had to finish it. Why I can’t...” Elektra exhaled sharply. “I can’t...not while he’s still alive.”

Matt grabbed her arm, gripped it hard. “You can. You _can_. You’re stronger than you know. You can stay, and you can face this.”

“Dammit, Matt.” Elektra gritted her teeth. “I can’t...there are things I need to figure out on my own, okay?”

“Like?”

“Like how to pay my credit card bill on time. Like how to get a job at a place where my name isn’t on the side of the building. I can’t have things handed to me anymore.” _And we both know that’s exactly what would happen if I stay here with you_.

The crestfallen look on Matt’s face was killing her. “I’ll come back, when all this blows over,” she went on. “When I’ve got all this stuff figured out. And then you can tell me if you still think I’m wrong about us. About me. ”

“I _know_ you’re wrong,” Matt said. “But it’s not like I could ever stop you once you’ve made up your mind.”

“I'll come back,” Elektra said again. “I'll come back. But right now, I can't... I have to go.” Matt's body slumped against hers. “I’m sorry.” Elektra held him for as long as she could. On the drive back to his apartment, Matt refused to let go of her hand.

“It’s not goodbye,” he said when she pulled up to the curb. “Whatever you’re thinking, whatever you’re afraid of...it will all be okay. If we’re together, it will be okay. We’ll make it okay.”

Like the first night she had run into him, Elektra had to hide her tears. “Okay, Matt,” she said quietly. “Until next time, then.”

Watching his back as he walked into his building, Elektra cried. She sat outside his apartment with her head on her steering wheel and cried. She cried for him and for her father. And most of all, she cried for herself. That she pushed away the only man left who loved her because she always had to run away, because she always had to be afraid. That she was, once again, alone.

 

\----------

 

When she finally managed to stem her tears, Elektra called Karen. “Sorry, I know it’s early,” she said. “And it’s Christmas. Would...would you mind coming to the airport with me?”

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Karen asked as she got into Elektra’s car.

“You heard about Fisk.”

Karen nodded. Elektra told Karen what happened, told her everything, except that Fisk had discovered Matt was Daredevil. Instead, she said Matt had used his lawyering skills to turn Fisk’s guards against him.

“Elektra, Matt and Foggy can get you out of this,” Karen said. “They’ll convince the cops it was self-defense.”

Elektra looked Karen in the eye. “It wasn’t self-defense.”

“You did what you had to,” Karen said quietly as Elektra pulled onto the street. “And I’m glad.”

“He’s still alive,” Elektra said through gritted teeth. _Somehow, that bastard’s still alive_.

“You shot him in the head, right?” Karen asked. “The news said he was in a coma. At least, unlike prison, he can’t give anybody orders when he’s unconscious.”

Elektra sighed. “You sound like Matt.”

“Matt...” Karen bit her lip. “Was he... What did he say? About what you did.”

Elektra shook her head. “Dumb stuff. Stuff about lying to the police. That’s not him, Karen. Sooner or later he’d regret it. He carries around a lot of heavy shit, you know. I... I can’t be another one of his burdens.”

Karen remained quiet for a while. Finally, she said, “I don’t think Matt thinks you’re a burden. He’s been happy since you came back - even with all the shit that went down, he was happy.”

“Don’t -” Elektra clenched her teeth and forced back fresh tears. “Don’t tell me that. _Please_.”

Karen fell silent, but she didn’t apologize. She didn’t need to tell Elektra what she already knew. _You’re hurting him_. Hurting him so he couldn’t hurt her.

When Elektra saw the signs for the airport arrivals, she said, “Look after Matt for me. Don’t let him lose his way. And don’t be too hard on him.”

“Hard on him?” Karen frowned. “Why would I be hard on him?”

“Just if... if he lies to you or something. I don’t know. Like I said, he’s carrying around a lot of shit, but his heart’s in the right place. And he needs friends like you and Foggy.”

“He needs you too.”

“Karen-”

“It’s true,” Karen said firmly as Elektra parked her car. “And you know it. I get that you need to get away for a while - believe me, I understand - but you can come back. You don’t have to run forever.”

Elektra reached over to the passenger seat and gave Karen a hug. “Thanks. I... I don’t want to run forever.”

After Karen helped her with her bags, Elektra held out her car keys. “Take it around the block once a week to keep the battery from dying,” she said.

Karen took the keys with a bewildered look. “You...you want me to look after your car?”

Elektra pointed her finger at Karen in a vaguely threatening way. “ _Do not_ let Foggy drive it. I’m serious.”

That made Karen smile. “Okay,” she said holding up the keys. “We’ll see you soon.”

Elektra grabbed her suitcases and headed toward the international terminal. She didn’t allow herself to look back.

 

\----------

 

“ _Buddy_.” It was Foggy Nelson on Matt’s phone. His casually cheerful tone was the exact opposite of how Matt felt. “Buddy. Please tell me you’ve heard the news.”

 _Yeah, I heard the news_ , Matt thought miserably. _The news that Elektra’s run off on me. Again_. “Are you talking about Fisk?”

“Yes! So...why do you sound so dejected?”

Matt sighed and then relayed the events of the last twenty-four hours over the phone, ending with Elektra leaving him standing on the curb to drive off to the airport.

“Oh my God,” Foggy whispered. “So Fisk...he knows? He knows it’s you?”

“Unless his head injury gives him amnesia.”

“Well,” Foggy raised his voice to a normal tone, clearly trying to sound optimistic. “They’re still saying they’re not sure if he’s going to make it. And that if he does, the outlook is pretty bad.”

“Yeah.” All of this was small comfort to Matt Murdock, with Elektra headed halfway around the world. Should he have told her to finish Fisk off? Should he have encouraged her to become a killer? _No_ , a voice in his head answered immediately. It wasn’t Stick this time. _You did the right thing, even if it hurts_. The right thing was rarely the easy one.

“Are you going to tell me to go to the cops?” Matt asked Foggy.

There was a very long pause on the other end of the line. “No.”

“You...you’re not?”

“No, Matt,” Foggy said. “I know Elektra and I don’t always get along - and I know I’m putting that mildly - but I’m not going to tell you to hand someone you care about over to the police. I mean, how could I? I’ve known about the mask for over a year now, and I haven’t turned you in. I believe in the law, but... but some things are more important.”

Matt bit his lip, ignoring the pain it caused. “Thanks, Foggy,” he said quietly. _More than you know._

“You’re welcome. Now,” Foggy’s tone shifted back to its normal lightness, “I’m going to swing by Karen’s, and then we’re coming to get you, so put all your bloody clothes away and get ready to eat your weight in ham, because I’m pretty sure my mom cooked an entire pig this year.”

“Foggy, I-”

“Nope,” Foggy said. “No exceptions, pal. You’re going to have a good day, even if I have to force you.”

Matt willed himself out of bed to brush his teeth and shave, trying not to notice the way his apartment still smelled like her, how it still felt like he could walk back out of his bathroom and find her lying on his bed or curled up on his couch.

He pulled on a nice outfit - his body was a mass of painful bruises, and he thought he had a black eye, but hopefully that could remain concealed behind his sunglasses. His knuckles, however, were swollen, cracked and raw, and there was no way Mrs. Nelson wasn’t going to comment on that.

There was a knock at his door, too light and impatient to be either Foggy or Karen. There was only one person standing outside. For one terrible, wonderful moment, he thought Elektra had come back. But she hadn’t. It was the older woman who lived across the hall.

“Matthew,” she said when he opened the door, irritation dripping from her voice. He didn’t think she was here to give him a Christmas card. “It’s Fran.”

“Hi, Fran.” Matt knew whatever half-assed smile he managed was inadequate.

“Were you drinking last night?”

“What?”

Fran grabbed his wrist and deposited his cane and sunglasses into his hand. “The hallway is not your personal closet, Matthew. And you look like shit.”

“Wow, thanks.” _Gotta love New Yorkers_.

Fran crossed her arms. “Do you have a drinking problem, Matthew? Rosita says her husband sees you and your friends at the bar around the corner nearly every night.” Rosita lived two floors below them, and, like Fran, had never learned how to mind her own business in her fifty-plus years of life. But as absurd as this line of questioning was, he’d rather have his neighbors thinking he was a drunk than the alternatives.

“I’m fine,” Matt said. “Thanks. Merry Christmas, Fran.”

Matt shut the door before she could respond. He heard her huff and then return to her apartment.

A little while later and it was Foggy and Karen at the door, Foggy’s pounding and shouting Christmas carols in the hallway doing nothing to dispel any of his neighbor’s suspicions.

After Matt let them in, Karen enveloped him in a fierce hug. “Elektra told me everything,” she said, pulling him close. It couldn’t have been _everything_ , he thought, or else she wouldn’t be hugging him like this.

“Oh, what the hell,” Foggy said to himself, then threw his arms around both of them. “Group hug!” Karen laughed. Even Matt had to crack a smile.

“You...you talked to Elektra?” Matt asked after he’d extricated himself from his two friends.

“Before her flight,” Karen said. “She told me how you managed to talk Fisk’s guards into turning on him, _thank God_.”

“Uh...that’s our Murdock,” Foggy added, this all clearly being news to him. “Always a lawyer!”

Karen grabbed Matt’s hand and ran a finger over his busted knuckles. “Looks like you managed to get in a few hits too.”

Matt just shrugged and went to put on the glasses that Fran had returned.

“Hold on.” Karen pulled a small object out of her purse and began to dab something cool and creamy on his black eye. Makeup? “Let me try to cover this up, so Foggy’s mom doesn’t lose her mind.”

“Did...did Elektra tell you what she did?” Matt asked.

“Don’t be too hard on her, Matt,” Karen said. “No matter what she says...I think she’s just scared.” Karen’s own heart began to beat rapidly, like she was scared too.

“I know,” Matt said. “It was her choice to leave, Karen. Not mine.”

Foggy popped his head in between the two of them. “Hey, nice work, K! You could be a makeup artist, er... If you didn’t have such a great job working for us, of course.”

Karen snorted. “Foggy, what did I tell you about calling me ‘K’?”

“What? I forgot! It’s Christmas!” Foggy slapped Matt on the back as he donned his sunglasses and coat.

Karen’s makeup artistry must have been as impressive as Foggy said, because his mom didn’t freak out until she saw Matt’s split knuckles.

“Oh my goodness, Matthew,” Mrs. Nelson said in a low, horrified voice, like he’d shown up for Christmas dinner full of bullet holes. “What on earth happened to you?”

“Oh, uh... just hitting the punching bag.” He let out an embarrassed laugh. “I didn’t think it would hit back.” Matt’s attempts to put his hands in his pockets were thwarted by Mrs. Nelson’s vise-like grip on his wrist.  

“Franklin,” she hissed. “Did you see this? Did you know about this?”

It was Mr. Nelson who came to Matt’s rescue. “Chip off the old block, huh?” He said, clapping Matt on the shoulder heartily, while at the same time steering him away from his overprotective wife.

“Jim!”

“The kid’s fine, Ros.” Mr. Nelson handed Matt a cold bottle of beer. “Get that on those bruises, son.”

Mrs. Nelson gave up on her husband and went back to berating her son as he set the table. Karen attempted to make small talk with Foggy’s sister and her boyfriend, but the pair of them were more concerned about what was in the food.

“Big sis is a ‘ _vegan_ ’ now,” Foggy explained. Matt could practically hear him rolling his eyes. He'd shared lunch enough times with Foggy to know exactly how he felt about that sort of diet.

“You’ll at least have some ham,” Mrs. Nelson said. Karen stifled a giggle as Foggy’s sister sighed.

Matt remained quiet through dinner, forcing himself to eat despite having no appetite. Where was Elektra now? Still on a plane? In Tokyo by herself? He remembered her telling them how Christmas was considered somewhat of a romantic holiday in Japan. _It could have been in New York too_ , he thought dejectedly. Why did she always have to run away? Why could he never make her stay?

And somewhere, in a darkened hospital room, was Wilson Fisk still breathing?

Karen nudged him while the Nelson family cleared the table, arguing about liberal politics. “You okay?”

Matt shrugged. “Maybe after a few more of these.” He tapped his empty (and third) bottle of beer.

“It'll all work out,” Karen said to him quietly. “Remember what I said? It has to mean something.”

“I know.”

Because if it didn’t...well, that wasn’t the kind of God he believed in. Matt didn’t understand why God would spare Wilson Fisk, but he finally understood that he wasn’t meant to. That he wasn’t one of the Saints or the Martyrs. He might have an unusual set of gifts, but he was the same as everyone else in God’s eyes - even Fisk. Just a man. No more, no less.

Foggy took the opportunity of his mother and sister arguing about feeding leftovers to the dog (“Dogs can’t digest wheat, Mom.”) to pour the three of them some eggnog with their rum and herd Karen and Matt out to the back porch.

“What a douchebag,” Foggy said about his sister’s boyfriend as he shut the sliding door behind them. Matt hadn’t been paying enough attention to have an opinion.

“Isn’t it a brother’s job to warn his sister about this sort of thing?” Karen asked.

“That’s a _big_ brother’s job,” Foggy said, fiddling around with something in a large paper bag. “A _little_ brother’s job is to make long car rides as unbearable as possible. And I happen to be an _excellent_ little brother.”

“What is that?” Matt asked as Foggy pulled several long, cylindrical shaped objects from the bag.

“I’ve been saving these for a special occasion, and I think now’s the time.” Foggy paused. “Yeah, now’s the time. Unless one of you is secretly engaged or something.” He knelt in the middle of the yard and began clearing snow with his foot.

“Oh God,” Matt said. “Karen, what is he doing?”

“I don’t really know...” Karen leaned toward the yard. “Foggy, are those... _fireworks_? Are you even allowed to have those in the city?”

“No,” Matt said. “You’re not.”

“What can I say? I’m a maverick, baby.” Foggy began to arrange the fireworks in the spot he’d cleared.

“You do have them pointing up, right?” Matt didn’t know anything about fireworks, but he knew you generally wanted to aim them toward the sky and not your next-door neighbor’s yard.

“Yes, I have them pointed _up_ ,” Foggy replied, like the very suggestion was insulting his intelligence. At the same time, he knelt back down in the snow.

“He moved it, didn’t he?” Matt asked Karen.

Karen grabbed Matt’s arm. “Let’s just stand over here,” she said, positioning them so that they were shielded by the patio chairs.

“Oh, come on,” Foggy grumbled. “‘Ye of little faith.’” It took him three tries to get a match to actually stay lit. Matt felt the warmth, smelled a faint burning, as Foggy set the fuse alight. For a moment, nothing happened.

“Uh...” Foggy said.

There was a sudden explosion of heat and smoke, a deafening crackling of sound. Matt heard Karen gasp in delight beside him.

“Christmas colors,” Karen said. “Did you plan that?”

“ _Totally_ ,” Foggy lied as he set off the next round.

“It’s like a million stars,” Karen said to Matt.

 _A million stars_ , he thought. _A million lives with a million stories_. A million people in the city who still needed him. Who he still needed to need him.

And her. _Elektra_. She promised she’d come back, and he had to believe that. When she did, he and the city would be waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there you have it. THANK YOU SO MUCH for making it to the end of this story, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. I know this might not be the happy ending some of you wanted for Matt and Elektra, but this felt like it was the right way to end this story; they've both still got a lot of room to grow, and sometimes I think you have to do that on your own.
> 
> With that being said, I do plan on finishing two shorter follow-up pieces to this story - one focused on Elektra in Japan (with an appearance from my favorite elderly badass/grouch), and one focused on Nelson and Murdock representing Melvin Potter. I do have some ideas for another novel-length fic involving the whole gang - a "Season 3" to this Season 2 AU - but that's very much in the early stages of development, so I can't promise if/when it will pan out.
> 
> In the meantime, I've got at least one short piece from Dragon Age to post on AO3, and you can always follow/message me on tumblr ([captain-zajjy.tumblr.com](http://captain-zajjy.tumblr.com)) to keep up with my writing progress. I have to say that the comments, kudos, and feedback everyone has left on this story have meant A LOT to me, and definitely inspired me to keep plugging away at the writing life. Thanks again for reading :3


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